
^oV^ 









<i>%^ 

^ % 


























\ 



%c^ 









^'^-n* 



.<^ 









-5.^ 



Lib. 



Colo- 

Labe 
Pri 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



Placmillan'g pocket amertcan anti lEttjgligl) Claggics, 



A Series of English Texts, edited for use in Elementary and 
Secondary Schools, with Critical Introductions, Notes, etc. 

25c. 



i6mo. 



Cloth. 



each. 



Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley. 
Andersen's Fairy Tales. 
Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 
Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum. 
Browning's Shorter Poems. 
Browning, Mrs., Poems (Selected). 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation. 
Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 
Byron's Shorter Poems. 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 
Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. 
Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Won- 
derland (Illustrated). 
Chaucer's Prologue and Knight's Tale. 
Church's The Story of the Iliad. 
Church's The Story of the Odyssey. 
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. 
Cooper's The Deerslayer. 
Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. 
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 
De Quincey's Confessions of an 
English Opium-Eater. 

Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and The 
Cricket on the Hearth. 

Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 

Early American Orations, 1760-1824. 

Edwards' (Jonathan) Sermons. 

Eliot's Silas Marner. 

Epoch-making Papers in U. S. His- 
tory. 

Franklin's Autobiography. 

Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. 

Grimm's Fairy Tales. 

Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. 

Hawthorne's The House of the Seven 
Gables. 

Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales (Selec- 
tions from). 

Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. 

Homer's Iliad. 

Homer's Odyssey. 

Irving's Life of Goldsmith. 

Irving's The Alhambra. 

Irving's Sketch Book. 

Keary's Heroes of Asgard. 



Kingsley's The Heroes. 
Lamb's Essays. 
Lamb's The Essays of Elia. 
Longfellow's Evangeline. 
Longfellow's Miles Stahdish. 
Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfa'. 
Macaulay's Essay on Addison. 
Macaulay's Essay on Hastings. 
Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive. 
Macaulay's Essay on Milton. 
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rom.e. 
Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. 
Milton's Comus and Other Poems. 
Milton's Paradise Lost, Bks. I and II. 
Old English Ballads. 
Out of the Northland. 
Palgrave's Golden Treasury. 
Plutarch's Lives (C«sar, Brutus, and 

Mark Antony). 
Poe's Poems. 

Poe's Prose Tales (Selections from). 
Pope's Homer.'s Iliad. 
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. 
Scott's Ivan-hoe. 
Scott's Lady of the Lake. 
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
Scott's Marmion. 
Scott's Quentin Durward. 
Scott's The Talisman. 
Shakespeare's As You Like It. 
Shakespeare's Hamlet. 
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 
Shakespeare's Macbeth. 
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. 
Shelley and Keats: Poems. 
Southern Poets: Selections. 
Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book I. 
Stevenson's Treasure Island. 
Swift's Gulliver's Travels 
Tennyson's Idylls of the King. 
Tennyson's The Princess. 
Tennyson's Shorter Poems. 
Woolman's Journal. 
Wordsworth's Shorter Poems. 



.nTHFR.q TO FOLLOW. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
BY 

HELEN J. ROBINS 

TEACHER OF ENGLISH IN MISS BALDWIN'S SCHOOL 
BRYN MAWR 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 

All rights reserved 



■ tJSSA.RY or ooNa^^f 5iS 
AUG 23 lyuc 

I COPY a. 






^ 



^ 



Copyright, 1905, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ix 

USSAYS: FIB ST SEBIES 

) The South-Sea House 1 

Oxford in the Vacation 8 

Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago . . 14 

Tub Two Races of Men 27 

New Year's Eve . . . . . . . . .32 

.Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist . . . . .39 

A Chapter on Ears 45 

All Fools' Day 50 

A Quakers' Meeting 54 

The Old and the New Schoolmaster .... 59 

Valentine's Day 67 

Imperfect Sympathies 70 

Witches, and other Night-Fears 78 

My Relations 84 

Mackery End in Hertfordshire 91 

Modern Gallantry 95 

^ The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple ... 99 

Grace before Meat 110 

V 



VI CONTENTS 

PAGE 

My First Play ......... 117 

/j^ Dream-Children : A Reverie 121 

Distant Correspondents ....... 126 

The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 131 

A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Me- 
tropolis 138 

\s A' Dissertation upon Roast Pig 145 

"A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married 

People 152 

On Some of the Old Actors ...... 159 

On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century . . 170 

On the Acting of Munden ....... 178 

LAST ESSAYS 

BlAKESMOOR in H SHIRE ....... 186 

v/PooR Relations . . . = . . . . .191 

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading . . . 197 

Stage Illusion ......... 203 

To THE Shade of Elliston 206 

Ellistoniana . e 209 

The Old Margate Hoy 214 

The Convalescent 222 

Sanity of True Genius ....... 226 

Captain Jackson 229 

The Superannuated Man 233 

The Genteel Style in Writing o » . . . 240 

Barbara S— — ......... 245 



CONTENTS yii 

PAGE 

The Tombs in the Abbey 250 

Amicus Kedivivus . . 253 

Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney 257 

Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago ..... 266 
Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Pro- 
ductions OF Modern Art 273 

Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age . . 284 

The Wedding 289 

The Child Angel : A Dream 295 

A Death-Bed 297 

Old China 299 

Popular Fallacies: 

I. That a Bully is always a Coward . . 305 

II. That Ill-gotten Gain never Prospers . . 306 

III. That a Man must not Laugh at his own Jest 306 

IV. That Such a One shows his Breeding — That 

it is Easy to perceive he is no Gentleman 307 
V. That the Poor copy the Vices of the Rich 307 
VI. That Enough is as Good as a Feast . . 309 
VII. Of Two Disputants, the Warmest is gener- 
ally in the Wrong 310 

VIII. That Verbal Allusions are not Wit, be- 
cause THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION 311 

IX. That the Worst Puns are the Best . .311 

X. That Handsome is that Handsome does . 314 
XI. That we must not look a Gift Horse in the 

Mouth 316 



viu CONTENTS 



1 



Popular Fallacies : 

XII. That Home is Home though it is never so 

Homely ........ 318 

Xni. That you must love Me and love my Dog . 322 

XIV. That we should rise with the Lark . . 326 

XV. That we should lie down with the Lamb . 328 J 

XVI. That a Sulky Temper is a Misfortune . 330" 

Notes , , 335 



INTRODUCTION 



The story of Charles Lamb is soon told, and needs no com- 
ment. " He neither preached nor prescribed," wrote one of his 
friends, "but let his own actions tell their tale and produce 
their natural effects." His life was lacking in event. He lived 
it altogether in his ''ever-dear" London, or the immediate 
neighbourhood, — visiting the continent but once, and then for 
only a few weeks. One tragic happening in his twenty-first 
year determined his career for him ; this — the only fact of 
his life which never found its way into his waitings, and which 
was even unknown to many of his friends during his lifetime — 
pointed out to him the path which he followed " courageous 
and faithful to the end." To. Lamb, ''one of the rarest and 
most delicate of the Humourists of England," Coleridge writes 
in this year : — 

" I look upon you as a man called by sorrow and anguish and 
a strange desolation of hope into quietness, and a soul set 
apart and made peculiar to God." 

There was insanity in the family of the Lambs. Charles 
himself had fallen a victim to it, although but once, at the close 
of his tw^entieth year, and then for only a short time. "The 
six w^eeks that finished last year and began this," he writes 
characteristically to Coleridge, " your humble servant spent 
very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton." In his case there 
was never any return, but his elder sister, Mary, had not been 
quite free from the malady, and when she was thirty-two, in 
the year 1796, in a more violent attack than had ever before 
seized her, she killed her mother. Charles " was at hand," he 
said, " only time enough to snatch the knife from her grasp." 
From this year on, the mania returned at intervals, — though 
always afterward with some warning, — and it would often be 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

necessary for her to leave home, and to remain in an asylu^ 
sometimes for several months together. ' 

Her younger brother now devoted his life to her; —from thia 
moment he forgot his own interests in hers, — forgot himself so 
completely indeed that it seemed to him Mary who was sacri- 
ficing her life to his. In truth, it would be as vain as unneces- 
sary to attempt to distinguish ; the brother and sister gave 
themselves up wholly each to the other, and it is impossible to 
consider them apart. Their friends spoke of them together, 
one name always brought the other with it; the personal pro- 
noun in Charles's correspondence is as often '^ w^e " as " I," and 
his letters to their friends close with ''our loves," ''our best 
good wishes," or with " believe m, yours most truly." 

During all the thirty-eight years lived together thus by the 
brother and sister, —only one of which was not marked by an 
illness of Mary's, — Charles Lamb was never at peace, but 
always anxious, always watchful; asking his friends not to 
come to his house when symptoms of the malady began to show 
themselves, cutting himself off from visitors and visits when 
these would be dangerous to Mary, and hardest of all, at times ^ 
losing her loved companionship. 

" What sad large pieces it cuts out of life," he writes to Cole- 
ridge, in 1809, — " out of her life, who is getting rather old ; 
and we may not have many years to live together. I am 
weaker and bear it worse than I ever did. But I hope we 
shall all be comfortable by and by." Year after year such pas- 
sages find their way into his correspondence. ''My house is 
full at present, but empty of its chief pride. She is dead to 
me for many months." And, in 1825, to another friend: 
"My sister ... is laid up, deprived of reason for many weeks 
to come, I fear. She is in the same house, but we do not meet. 
It makes both worse. ... If you come this way any morning, 
I can only just shake you by the hand. This gloomy house 
does not admit of my making my friends welcome." 

This then is the main fact 6i Lamb's life. The rest of his 
biography he has written for us in his essays. Born February 
10, 1775, in Crown Office Row, in the Inner Temple, he was the 
youngest of the three children of John and Elizabeth Lamb, of 
whom the eldest was another son, John. For his brother 



INTRODUCTION XI 

Charles entertained a real affection, reflected in all he writes of 
him under the name "James Elia " ; — although that brother 
seems to have done nothing to help his family when they were 
in poverty, and, as we know from Mary's letters, left the burden 
of the tragedy, too, upon the younger son. 

The early associations of Charles Lamb with the Temple 
find their expression in the essay on the Old Benchers, as the 
best account of his schooldays is in Christ's Hospital Thirty- 
Five Years Ago. At school he formed the friendship of a life- 
time with Coleridge, who was three years older than he was. 
Lamb loved him truly as a man, .and placed him first among 
modern poets. When he left school at fifteen, it was not 
however to enter the university with Coleridge, but to take up 
some work that should help him to support his family; for his 
mother was an invalid, his father was helpless through illness 
and age. 

'' It was at a very tender age that Charles Lamb entered the 
work-a-day world,'' says Barry Cornwall. " His brother John 
had at that time a clerkship in the South-Sea House, and 
Charles passed a short time there under his brother's care or 
control, and must thus have gained some knowledge of figures. 
. . . Charles remained in this ofiice only until the 5th April, 
1792, when he obtained an appointment as clerk in the 
Accountant's Office of the East Lidia Company. He was then 
seventeen years of age." 

Here, for thirty-three years. Lamb worked every day from 
ten to four o'clock. As we know from his letters, the work 
was irksome to him, and he longed for freedom, and for time. 
" O, for a few years between the grave and the desk ! " His 
happiness in emancipation — so great as to be at first over- 
whelming and almost oppressive — is reflected in his corre- 
spondence in April, 1825, when the company allowed him to 
retire, with a pension for the rest of his life and a provision 
for his sister, in case — as did happen — she should outlive 
him. His literary record of this circumstance is the biographi- 
cal essay, The Superannuated Man. There were left him, 
however, but few years in which to enjoy his new liberty. He 
died in December of the year 1834, at Edmonton, where he lies 
buried. His sister survived him for thirteen years, during the 



Xii INTRODUCTION 

greater part of which she was happily deprived of the under- 
standing to appreciate lier loss. 

It was in the early years of visits to his grandmother, Mrs. 
Field, housekeeper of the manor house of the Plumers in 
Hertfordshire, that there occurred the so-called love-affair 
with the " fair-haired maid" of his sonnets, — referred to there 
as " Anna," and over and over again in the essays as '^ Alice 

W n," for which the name " Winterton " is supplied in 

Lamb's Key. In an article republished from the Cornhill in 
LittelUs Living Age, June, 1904, entitled How I traced Charles 
Lamb in Hertfordshire, Canon Ainger, the late ardent student 
and editor of Lamb, quotes a conversation with Mrs. Tween, 
whom he met in Widford, — one of the daughters of that Mr. 
Randall Morris, an old and valued friend of the Lamb family, 
whose death is so beautifully described in The Death-Bed, 
one of The Last Essays of Elia. From Mrs. Tween Canon 
Ainger eagerly inquired about Alice : " Did she actually live in 
Widford, and what was her name ? ^ Yes ; she lived very near 
Blakesware.' . . . And her name? ' Oh ! her name was Xancy 
Simmons ! Ann, . . . but she was always called ISTancy.' 
Ann Simmons then had been the Anna, the Alice with the 
watchet eyes and the ^ yellow Hertfordshire hair.' . . . How 
or why Lamb's boyish passion was unrequited — whether his 
poverty or the taint of insanity in the family proved the fatal 
obstacle — Mrs. Tween could not tell me." 

We know, however, that Anna, or Alice, married a Mr. 
Bartram, a silversmith in Soho, and whether or not Lamb was 
really deeply in earnest in the love-affair, we hear no more of it 
after the dreadful happening of 1796. In this year he had pub- 
lished some sonnets and other poems with Coleridge, but now 
he writes to his friend : — 

" Mention nothing of poetry, I have destroyed every vestige 
of past vanities of that kind. ... I am wedded to the for- 
tunes of my sister and my poor old father." 

Before the date of this letter, the family had moved from the 
Temple to Little Queen Street, Holborn, where the father died 
within a few months, and from this time on Charles and Mary 
were never many years in any one place. Mary's malady made 
them unwelcome inmates, and we find them in no less than 



« 



I 



INTROD UCTIOI^ xiii 

eleven lodgings between 1796 and 1834. Every few years there 
is some notice of a change in Lamb's letters to his friends. To 
Thomas Manning he writes in 1809, jestingly, for Manning was 
then in China: — 

" Don't come any more to Mitre Court Buildings. We are 
at 34, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and shall be 
here until about the end of May ; then we remove to No. 4, 
Liner Temple Lane, where I mean to live and die ; for I have 
such a horror of moving that I would not take a benefice from 
the King if I was not indulged with non-residence. What a 
dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word 'moving'! 
Such a heap of little nasty things, after you think all is got 
into the cart; . . . things that it is impossible the most neces- 
sitous person can ever want, but which the women, who pre- 
side on these occasions, will not leave behind, if it was to save 
your soul. . . , Then you can find nothing you want for many 
days after you get into your lodgings. . . . Were I Diogenes 
I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though 
the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second 
reeked claret." 

And when he has settled in 4 Inner Temple Lane, he writes 
to Coleridge in the spirit of the essay on New Year's Eve: 
" Alas ! the household gods are slow^to come in a new man- 
sion. They are in their infancy to me ; I do not feel them yet. 
How I hate and dread new places ! " 

His biographer, Talfourd, gives it as his opinion that these 
years spent in the Inner Temple were the happiest of Lamb's 
life, — and he dwells at delightful length upon the " Wednes- 
day evenings " at the Lambs, of which William Hazlitt too 
has left contemporary accounts. At the close of the letter to 
Manning quoted above. Lamb touches with characteristic sim- 
plicity upon these meetings which have become famous : — 

" On Wednesdays is my levee. The Captain, Martin, Phillips 
(not the sheriff), Rickman, and some more are constant attend- 
ants, besides stray visitors. We play at whist, eat cold meat 
and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses, smokes. 
Why do you never drop in? You'll come some day, won't 
you ? " 

" I went late to Lamb's," reads an entry in Henry Crabb 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

Robinson's diary. " His party was there, and a numerous and 
odd set they were, for the most part interesting and amusing 
people." Sometimes the two great poets would come, Words- 
worth and Coleridge, both Lamb's dear friends. " A large 
party gathered round the poets," writes Crabb Robinson again, 
" but Coleridge had the larger number." Or that extraordinary 
genius was there, William Hazlitt, whom Lamb considered 
" to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and 
finest spirits breathing." Leigh Hunt too would " drop in," — 
the famous editor of the Examiner, the political paper which 
aimed to '^produce reform in Parliament and liberality of 
opinion in general," — Hunt, the friend of the most famous 
literary men of his time, the Harold Skimpole of Dickens's 
Bleak House; Crabb Robinson, "that true winner in the game 
of life, w^hose leisure hours, achieved early, were devoted to his 
friends"; or Lamb's first biographers, " the juvenile Talfourd," 
and " Barry Cornwall " — Bryan Waller Procter, — " the school- 
mate of Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel at Harrow, the friend 
and companion of Keats, Lamb, Shelley, Coleridge, Landor, 
Hunt, Talfourd, and Rogers, — the man to whom Thackeray 
dedicated his Vanity Fair.'" 

If it is true that, as Matthew Arnold has said, "the great 
record for the outward \\i^ of a man " is " the clear consenting 
voice of all his contemporaries ... in praise of his sincerity, 
justice, and goodness," — it is significant indeed that all these 
friends loved Lamb truly, and that they have left the "great 
record" — they and many others — in their letters, in notices 
at the time of his death, in memoir and biography later. 
They respected him deeply and valued him for the strength of 
his goodness, for the sympathy and help he gave them ; they 
loved him for his charm, for that unique combination of wit and 
gaiety with " excellent and serious conversation " which made 
him when present " always the centre from which and to which 
tended the stream of the talk." Of all that circle he was surely 
most in need of cheering, yet none of them ever write of " going 
to cheer Charles Lamb " ; they went rather for what he had 
to give. And his gaiety was not forced in an attempt to seek 
relief from the strain under which he lived, — even while he 
found relief in it; it was as much a part of him as his senti- 



INTRODUCTION XV 

ment. " The most witty and sensible of men," Hazlitt called 
him. Those who knew the combination understood his jests, 
" not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand " ; but even 
his friends were sometimes put to the test by his love of prac- 
tical joking in his correspondence, and in company he had what 
I)e Quincey pompously called *'a propensity to mystify a 
stranger." 

To quote examples of Lamb's jokes, of his witty remarks, 
would be an endless task, and wholly un satisfactory ; no one or 
two could serve as illustration. And even when we read all 
that has been preserved and recorded of him, how much must 
still be lost to us. 

" Many of Lamb's witty and curious sayings have been re- 
peated since his death," writes Talfourd, " which are w^orthy to 
be held in undying remembrance ; but they give ijo idea of the 
general tenor of his conversation, which was far more singular 
and delightful in the traits which could never be recalled, than 
in the epigrammatic terms which it is possible to quote." And, 
again, " Alas! how many even of his own most delicate fancies, 
rich as they are in feeling and in wisdom, will be lost to those 
who have not present to them, the sweet broken accents, the 
half-playful, half-melancholy smile of the author." 

It has been said that the pictures we have of Lamb are not 
truthful portraits, and in fact no two are very much alike; but 
the descriptions left of him in writing agree in bringing the 
•same face and figure before us. We know that he was *' frag- 
ile," and very small ; he hears, he writes to Manning, that the 
Emperor of the French is a small man, '' even less than me." 
Barry Cornwall tells us : — 

" Lamb was always dressed in black. *I take it,' he says, Ho 
be the proper costume of an author.' When this was once 
objected to, at a wedding, he pleaded the raven's apology in the 
fable, that ' he had no other.' His clothes were entirely black ; 
and he wore long black gaiters up to the knees. His head was 
bent a little forward, like one who had been reading ; and, if 
not standing or walking, he generally had in his hand an old 
book, a pinch of snuff, or, later in the evening, a pipe. He 
stammered a little, pleasantly, just enough to prevent his mak- 
ing speeches, just enough to make you listen eagerly for his 



xvill INTRODUCTION 

afterward, he had meant to emphasize the compliment rathei 
than any dispraise, as '' a book which only wants a sounder 
religious feeling to be as delightful as it is original/* Lamb 
was deeply hurt, but more on Hunt's account than on his own. 
'' In more than one place," he wrote in his reply to Southey, 
" you have been pleased to compliment me at the expense of 
my companions. I cannot accept your compliment at such a 
price." And his letter amounts in fact to a defence of Hunt, 
and of Hazlitt, against several attacks in the Quarterly. This 
letter, ''the only ripple on the kindliness of Lamb's personal 
and literary life," is perhaps best worth recalling for the sake 
of the one that followed, an exquisite example of apology. 

" Dear Southey : The kindness of your note has melted away 
the mist which was upon me. I have been fighting against a 
shadow. ... I was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in 
a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed against 
me. I wished both magazine and review at the bottom of the 
sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though 
innocent) will be still more so ; for the folly was done without 
her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guar- 
dian angel was absent at that time." And then in a character- 
istically quaint postscript, — suggested by his having likened 
Southey's writing to Hunt's, and prompted by the desire to 
retract wholly, to be all forgiven for what w^as in his own eyes 
so heinous an offence, anger with a friend, — "I do not think 

your handwriting at all like 's. I do not think many things 

I did think." 

We have no right to Lamb's letters, — those revelations of 
himself, those confidences to his friends ; he wrote for them, 
not for us. What he cared to have us know, he published in 
his essays, — where to be sure, fact is so combined with fancy 
that we cannot be sure whether he may not be leading us astray, 
— but only so much we have a right to know. When he 
wrote his letters he had no thought of their being published, — 
it would have been hard indeed for him to believe that any one 
would be " wiser and better " for reading them. But his first 
biographer did the work reverently, aiming only to show 
others the beauty and charm of a character that he felt himself 
fortunate indeed in having loved. One should come to know 



INTRODUCTION Xix 

Lamb first from the biography of Talfourd, — truly one of those 
whom Canon Ainger had in mind when he said of the lovers of 
Lamb that they "do not love him (as the saying goes) 'by 
halves,' but are content to be fanatical in their attachment, and 
not to be ashamed of it." The story of their first meeting Tal- 
fourd tells with all the rapture of it fresh upon him, and remem- 
bers after twenty -two years how Lamb took his arm and walked 
home with him to the Temple, " stammering out fine remarks as 
we walked " ; and how he came one day soon after to the office, 
'' breathless," to find Talfourd, and introduce him, an enthusi- 
X^-,^, eager boy of twenty, to the great poet Wordsworth, and 
presented him with the preface : " Wordsworth, give me leave 
to introduce to you my only admirer." 

The tone of the essays is that of the letters ; with a per- 
fection of finish they have yet the charm of informality, 
heightened by their note of personal reminiscence and per- 
sonal preference. And they show strikingly the influence of 
the style of Lamb's favourites in literature. " Sir Thomas 
Browne was a ' bosom cronie ' of his," writes " Janus Weather- 
cock" in the London Magazine, "so was Burton and old Fuller. 
In his amorous vein he dallied wdth that peerless Duchess of 
many folio odours; and with the hey-day comedies of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher he induced light dreams." 

He had a love for the old words in these authors ; his writ- 
ings, he says himself, are "pranked in an affected array of 
antique words and phrases," expressions which may be singled 
out as examjjles of the " obsolete " and the " archaic." These 
are altogether in place in his essays ; he appropriated them, 
with whatever else had charmed him in "such darling things 
as Chaucer sings," in that " Reverend Antiquity " to w^hich 
he "forever reverted." To point out such words is an easy 
matter; it is not so easy to trace to their sources, or even 
always to recognize as another's, all the lines and thoughts 
that Lamb has made his own. The rich treasury of his mind 
was stored with a wealth of imagery from his wid^ reading of 
English classics. Often he quotes, yet not always exactly, but 
altering to please himself ; more often he easily adopts the words 
of another writer, choosing from his storehouse with no indi- 
cation of having borrowed. This he does sometimes even de- 



XX INTRODUCTION 



1 



liberately, with conscious amusement in his own delightful 
perversity. " I love to anticipate charges of unoriginality," 
he writes to Southey once of some of his own verse ; " that line 
is almost Shakespeare's." 

So Elia abounds in echoes, — in suggestions of something we 
have read before somewhere; and the wider our reading has 
been, the greater will be our pleasure in detecting and recall- 
ing. " With such allusiveness as this," says Canon Ainger, " I 
need not say that I have not meddled in my notes. Its whole 
charm lies in our recognizing it for ourselves." -^rijS'B 

We find Elia also at times falling into an effective archaissake 
style, delightful in its quaintness, in the second paragraph of 
Poor Relations, for instance, in the opening of A Quakers' Meeting, 
or in parts of The South Sea-House and Oxford in the Vacation, 
In such reversion to an older style, he revives that ancient ap- 
peal to the reader which he knows so well how to employ, and 
uses apostrophe with special charm. Of this he makes a digni- 
fied, beautiful figure in the address to Coleridge, " the inspired 
charity-boy," or to " Blakesmoor,'' with its '' tattered and dimin- 
ished 'scutcheon " ; and by means of it he heightens the extrava- 
gance of some delicious absurdity, — calling for instance upon 
that " mockery of a river " which was like to have " extinguished 
forever " the spark of George Dyer's life, or upon the *^ pleas- 
ant shade " of Robert William Elliston. Metaphor is another 
favourite figure with Lamb, and this too he employs to its best 
advantage. 

To turn from style to subject-matter: even his reading — 
the folios, his '\ midnight darlings " — furnished Lamb with 
no more suggestions than the world in which he lived. Places 
he brings before us with vivid distinctness, and he introduces 
us into their very atmosphere ; people he can make no less real 
to us. 

" His description of John Tipp, the accountant," says Canon 
Ainger, "• was enough to show that not only a keen observer, 
but a mastef of English was at work." And beside the clerks 
in the South-Sea House we may place the no less perfect 
sketches of the Old Benchers — foremost among them Samuel 
Salt — and of Lovel, his own father, of his brother and his 
loved sister, James and Bridget Elia. As regards the truth of 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

one of his sketches he writes to Bernard Barton, his friend the 
" Quaker poef : " Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person 
as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter. A careful ob- 
server of life, Bernard, has no need to invent, nature romances 
it for him." 

But Lamb's essays are characterized especially by his unex- 
pected introduction of opposites, by the suddenness of his 
changes. " A sensibility to strong contrasts was the founda- 
tion of his humour," said Leigh Hunt. "His peculiar mixture 
of wit and fancy is to be found there," wrot-e Henry Crabb 
Bobinson of one of the essays, "in all its charming individual- 
ity. No one knows better than he the proportion of earnest- 
ness and gaiety for his indefinable compositions." Sometimes 
the melancholy dominates : " Hamlet himself would have recogv 
nized as in his subtlest vein the weird humourous sadness, the 
tragic jesting of Lamb's remarks on death in the essay on 
New Year's Eve,"" says his first publisher, Edmund Oilier. 
Again, all is brightness and laughter, as in the Rejoicings with 
the New Year, in the dainty, charming Valentine's Day, or in 
that exquisite mock-heroic Amicus Rediinvus. 

With Lamb's earlier writings, published before he became 
the "pride of the London Magazine,'' with his poems and plays 
and with his criticisms, — in his letters (even in those of his 
very early years), in his other essays, and in Dramatic Speci- 
mens, — with all this we are not concerned here. It is " Elia 
the grave and witty " whom we shall meet in these essays, 
written between the years 1820 and 1833 for the magazines, 
— for the London, the New Monthly, for Leigh Hunt's Indica- 
tor, ioT the A thencEum, and for the short-lived Englishman's Maga- 
zine, which ran for only a few months of the year 1831. The 
name "Elia," which Lamb said should be pronounced "El'lia," 
he borrowed at the start from an Italian fellow-clerk of his 
early days in the South-Sea House, preferring not to sign his 
own name to the first of his essays, as his brother was still in 
the house which he described. At the close of his Character 
of Elia originally stood these lines : " His Essays found some 
favour as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way 
into the crowd 'well enough singly ; how they will read, now 
they are brought together, is a question for the publishers, 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his * weaved- 
up follies.' " This " one piece " is the first collection, pub- 
lished in 1823 ; the Last Essays were brought out in collected 
form ten years later. 

To get at these writings in the most delightful way is to read 
them in the old magazines, to hunt for them among the faded 
pages, from which look up at the reader great names of a past 
century, — as signatures to articles or poems, in dramatic notices 
and criticisms, in reviews of works " just out,'* which have now 
become classics on our shelves. We are back among the fa- 
mous quarrels of those bygone great reviewers, back with what 
Hazlitt so vehemently denounced as '' the malice, the lying, the 
hypocrisy, the sleek adulation, the meanness, equivocation, and 
skulking concealment of a Quarterly Review, the reckless black- 
guardism of Mr. Blackwood"; back among the attack and re- 
tort of Edinburgh " Mohocks " and London " Cockneys." Among 
the jests too of the London staff and their friends; here is a 
witty comment from one of them on Ella's contribution last 
month, — and now follows Lamb's dear inimitable reply. 
This method of selection seems to bring Elia before us as the 
monthly contributions brought him first to the notice of the 
public and the critics ; we live with him then in truth in his 
own time. 



TEXT 

The text of the essays that follow is based directly upon the 
1823 and the 1833 editions of the Essays, and the Last Essays 
of Elia, and (with one exception, A Death-Bed) upon the 
text of these as they appeared originally in the magazines. I 
have considered carefully all changes made in punctuation, 
capitalization, and spelling by Canon Ainger in his edition, but 
I have kept the order of the early volumes, and have omitted 
whatever Lamb omitted there, occasionally supplying in my 
notes parts which appeared originally in the magazines. Any 
one interested in the original form of the essays, who has not 
access to the periodicals themselves, should consult the notes to 



INTROD UCTION xxiii 

Mr. E. V. Lucas's Edition of The Works of Charles and Mary 
Lamb, Vol. II, 1904. In preparing my notes I have referred 
to Canon Ainger's Edition of the essays, to Mr. E. V. Lucas's, to 
the volumes in the Temple Classics, edited by Mr. W. J. Craiu', 
and to the School Edition of Selected Essays, edited by George 
Armstrong Wauchope, 1904. 

H. J. R. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE ° 

Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou hast 
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a 
lean annuitant^ like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure a 
place for Dalston, or Shackle well, or some other thy suburban 
retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy- 5 
looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left, where 
Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate ? I dare say thou 
hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, 
and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, 
with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a desolation 10 
something like Balclutha's.° ^ 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy interests. 
The throng of merchants was here — the quick pulse of gain — 
and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the 
soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porti- 15 
coes ; imposing staircases ; offices roomy as the state apartments 
in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling 
clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee 
rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers, — directors 
seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend) 20 
at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with 
tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver ink- 
stands long since dry ; — the oaken wainscots hung with pictures 
of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and 
the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty ; — huge 25 

1 1 passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — 

OSSIAN. 



2 , THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated; — dustj 
maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of 
Panama ! The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in 
idle row, to walls, w^hose substance might defy any, short of the 
5 last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of cellarage under all, 
where dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an " unsunned heap," 
for Mammon° to have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long 
since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the break- 
ing of that famous Bubble. ° 

10 Such is the South-Sea House. At least such it was forty 
years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic ! What altera- 
tions may have been made in it since, I have had no opportu- 
nities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened 
it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters 

15 A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The mothi 
that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day- 
books, have rested from their depredations, but other light 
generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their 
single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a 

20 superfoetation of dirt !) upon the old layers that seldom used to 
be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, in 
quisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne'i 
reign ; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil som< 
of the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, whose extent the 

25 petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same ex- 
pression of incredulous admiration and hopeless ambition of 
rivalry as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy 
contemplating the Titan° size of Yaux's superhuman plot.' 
Peace to the manes° of the Bubble ! Silence and destitutionj 

30 are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial ! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and livin_ 
commerce, — amid the fret and fever of speculation — with the 
Bank, and the 'Change, and the India-house about thee, in the 
heyday of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it 

35 were, insulting thee, their poor neighbour out of business — to the 
idle and merely contemplative, — to such as me, old house! 
there is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessation — a coolness from 
business — an indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful! 
With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and 



a 

i 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 3 

courts at eventide! They spoke of the past: — the shade of 
some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by 
me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle 
me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, 
which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could 5 
lift from their enshrining shelves — with their old fantastic 
flourishes and decorative rubric^ interlacings — their sums in 
triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity of 
ciphers — with pious sentences at the beginning, without 
which our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book of 10 
business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers of some of 
them almost persuading us that we are got into some better 
library, — are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I can look 
upon these defunct dragons with complacency. Thy heavy 
odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had every- 15 
thing on a larger scale than we have hearts for) are as good as 
anything from Herculaneum.° The pounce-boxes° of our days 
have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea House — 
I speak of forty years back — had an air very different from 20 
those in the public offices that I have had to do with since. 
They partook of the genius° of the place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of 
superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had not 
much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn of mind. 25 
Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. Humourists,^ 
for they were of all descriptions ; and, not having been brought 
together in early life (which has a tendency to assimilate the 
members of corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most 
part, placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily 30 
carried into it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if 
I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they formed a 
sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic 
retainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet 
pleasant fellows, full of chat — and not a few among them had 35 
ari-ived at considerable proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans,° a Cambro-Briton.° 
He had something of the choleric complexion of his country- 
men stamped on his visage, but was a worthy, sensible man at 



4 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and frizzed 
out, in the fashion which I remember to have seen in caricatures 
of what were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies.^ He was 
the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat over 
5 his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him making up his 
cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every 
one about him was a defaulter ; in his hypochondry, ready to 
imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of th^ 
possibility of his becoming one : his tristful visage clearing uj 

10 a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where 
his picture still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire 
of the master of the coffee-house which he had frequented foi 
the last five and twenty years), but not attaining the meridian 
of its animation till evening brought on the hour of tea and 

15 visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at the 
door with the stroke of the clock announcing six, was a topic 
of never-failing mirth in the families which this dear old bache*- 
lor gladdened with his presence. Then was his forte, his glori- 
fied hour I How would he chirp and expand over a mufiin ! How 

20 would he dilate into secret history ! His countryman Pennant*^ 
himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he in 
relation to old and new London — the site of old theatres, 
churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's pond 
stood — the Mulberry-gardens — and the Conduit in Cheap, -^ 

25 with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal tradition 
of those grotesque figures which Hogarth^ has immortalized ir 
his picture of Noon, — the worthy descendants of those heroic 
confessors,^ who, flying to this country from the wrath of Louij 
the Fourteenth and his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pur( 

30 religion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog-lane and the vicin* 
ity of the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the air 
and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him for one, 
had you met him in one of the passages leading to Westminster- 

35 hall.° By stoop, I mean that gentle bending of the body for- 
wards, which, in great men, must be supposed to be the effect 
of an habitual condescending attention to the applications of 
their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you felt strained 
to the height in the colloquy. The conference over, you were 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 5 

Sit leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance of the pre- 
tensigns which had just awed you. His intellect was of the 
shallowest order. It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His 
mind was in its original state of white paper. ° A sucking babe 
might have posed him. What was it then? Was he rich? 5 
Alas, no ! Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife 
looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at 
all times within. She had a neat, meagre person, which it was 
evident she had not sinned in over -pampering ; but in its veins 
was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth of 10 
relationship, which I never thoroughly understood, — much less 
can explain with any heraldic certainty at this time of day, — to 
the illustrious, but unfortunate, house of Derwentwater. This 
was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the 
sentiment — the bright solitary star of your lives, — ye mild 15 
and happy pair, — which cheered you in the night of intellect, 
and in the obscurity of your station ! This was to you instead 
of riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments : 
and it was worth them all together. You insulted none with 
it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive armour only, 20 
no insult likewise could reach you through it. Decus et solamen.^ 
Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John Tipp. 
He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared 
one fig about the matter. He "thought an accountant the 
greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest ac-25 
countant in it." Yet John was not without his hobby. The 
fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with other 
notes than to the Orphean lyre.° He did, indeed, scream and 
scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in 
Threadneedle-street, which, without anything very substantial 30 
appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of 
himself that lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of 
them now°), resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert 
of " sweet breasts,^ " as our ancestors would have called them, 
culled from club-rooms, and orchestras — chorus singers — first 35 
and second violoncellos — double basses — and clarionets, — who 
ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and praised his ear. 
He sate like Lord Midas° among them. But at the desk Tipp 
was quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas that were 



6 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak o 
anything romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded 
A newspaper was thought too refined and abstracted. ' Th 
whole duty of man consisted in writing oif dividend warrants 
5 The striking of the annual balance in the company's booki 
(which, perhaps, differed from the balance of last year in th 
sum of 25/. 1.9. 6^.) occupied his days and nights for a montl 
previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness of thing 
(as they called them in the city) in his beloved house, or die 

10 not sigh for a return of the old stirring days when South-Ses 
hopes were young — (he was indeed equal to the wielding o 
any the most intricate accounts of the most flourishing com 
pany in these or those days): — but to a genuine accountant 
the difference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional far 

15 thing is as dear to his heart as the thousands which stand be 
fore it. He is the true actor who, whether his part be a princ( 
or a peasant, must act it with like intensity. With Tipp forn 
was everything. His life was formal. His actions seemec 
ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his heart 

20 He made the best executor in the world : he was plagued witl 
incessant executorships accordingly, which excited his spleei 
and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He w^ould swear (foi 
Tipp swore) at the little orphans, whose rights he would guarc 
with a tenacity like the grasp of the dyino' hand that com 

25 mended their interests to his protection. With all this then 
was about him a sort of timidity (his few enemies used to giv( 
it a worse name) — a something which, in reverence to the dead 
w^e will place, if you please, a little on this side of the heroic 
Nature certainl}^ had been pleased to endow John Tipp with a 

30 sufficient measure of the principle of self-preservation. There 
is a cowardice which we do not despise, because it has nothing 
base or treacherous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you: 
it is mere temperament ; the absence of the romantic and the 
enterprising; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, wdth 

35 Fortinbras,° " greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some sup- 
posed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a 
stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a balcony ; 
or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked down a preci- 
pice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water-party ; or would 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 7 

wiiliiigly let you go if he could have helped it : neither was it 
recorded of him, that for lucre, or for intimidation, he ever 
forsook friend or principle. 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead,° in 
whom common qualities become uncommon ? Can I forget 5 
thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of letters, the 
author, of the South-Sea House? who never enteredst thy office 
in a morning or quittedst it in midday (what didst thou in an 
office?) without some quirk that left a sting! Thy gibes and 
thy jokes are now extinct, or survive but in tw^o forgotten vol- 10 
umes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from a stall in 
Barbican,^ not three days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epi- 
grammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fas- 
tidious days — thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds°" 
of the time : — but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and 15 
in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rockingham, 
and How^e, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended 
in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious colonies, — and 
Keppel, and Wilkes,° and Saw bridge, and Bull, and Dunning, 
and Pratt, and Richmond, — and such small politics. 20 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, was 
fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended, — not 
in a right line. Reader (for his lineal pretensions, like his per- 
sonal, favoured a little of the sinister bend) from the Plumers ° 
of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out ; and certain 25 
family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly 
old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his 
days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen the w^orld. He 
was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who 
has represented the county in so many successive parliaments, 30 
and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in 
George the Second's days, and was the same who was sum- 
moned before the House of Commons about a business of 
franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may read 
of it in Johnson\s° Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that 35 
business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discounte- 
nance the rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, 
with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family preten- 
sions, Plumer w^as an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. 



8 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

!N'ot so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child- 
like, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely whisper- 
ing than thy Arcadian^ melodies, when, in tones worthy of 
Arden,° thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the ban- 
5 ished Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than 

for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M , the 

unapproachable churchwarden of Bishopsgate. He knew not 
what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring 
of blustering winter : — only unfortunate in thy ending, which 

10 should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but 
they must be mine in private : — already I have fooled th 
reader to the top of his bent; else could I omit that strange 
creature WooUett, who existed in trying the question, and 

If) bought litigations ! — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hep- 
worth, from whose gravity Newton^ might have deduced the 
law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib° a pen — ■ 

with what deliberation would he wet a wafer° ! 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling fast over 

20 me — it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this 
while — peradventure the very names, which I have summoned 
up before thee, are f antastic° — insubstantial — like Henry 
Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece^ : 

25 Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a 
being. Their importance is from the past. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article — 
as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, 
while it reads, seems as though it read not), never fails to con- 
30 suit the quis sculpsit *^ in the corner, before he pronounces some 
rare piece to be a Yivares, or a Woollet — methinks I hear you 
exclaim, Reader, Who is Ella ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-for- 
gotten humours^ of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of 



oxfoud ijsr the vacation 9 

business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already 
set me down in your mind as one of the self-same college — a. 
votary of the desk — a notched^ and cropt scrivener — one that 
sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, 
through a quill. 5 

Well, I do agnize^ something of the sort. I confess that it 
is my humour, my fancy — in the fore-part of the day, when 
the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation (and 
none better than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent 
from his beloved studies) — to while away some good hours 10 
of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw 
silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place 
* * * and then it sends you home with such in- 
creased appetite to your books ****** 
not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of fools- 15 
cap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impres- 
sion of sonnets, epigrams, essays, — so that the very parings of 
a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. 
The enfranchised quill that has plodded all the morning among 
the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its 20 
ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. 

— It feels its promotion. * * * * So that you 
see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Ella is very little, 
if at all, compromised in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities in- 25 
cidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought blind 
to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to pick 
in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, in the ful- 
ness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-away-with 
altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of 30 
freedom, through the four seasons, — the red-letter days,'^ now 
become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There was 
Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as 35 
when I was at school at Christ's.^ I remember their effigies, by 
the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book.° There hung 
Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the trouble- 



10 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

some act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagiioletti.i 
. — I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalca 
tion of Iscariot — so much did we love to keep holy memoriel 
sacred : — only methought I a little grudged at the coalition OB 
5 the better Jude^ with Simon — clubbing (as it were) their sanc- 
tities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day° between them 

— as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life 

— "far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an almanac 
10 in those days. I could have told you such a saint's day falls out 

next week,, or the w^eek after. Peradventure the Epiphany,° by 
some periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a 
Sabbath. N'ow am I little better than one of the profane. Let 
me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, 

15 who have judged the further observation of these holy tides° 
to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such long 
standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in 
decency, been first sounded — but I am wading out of my 
depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of civil and 

20 ecclesiastical authority — I am plain Elia — no Selden,'^ nor 
Archbishop Usher° — though at present in the thick of their 
books, here in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the 
mighty Bodley."^ 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such a 

25 one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of 
the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, 
to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other of the 
Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls 
in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmolested, and 

30 fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. I seem 
admitted ad eundem.^ I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise 
at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of 
humility I can be a Sizar,° or a Servitor.^ When the peacock 
vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner.° In graver moments, 

35 I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much 
unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed 
vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as 
I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go 
about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 11 

Church revere nd° quadrangle I can be content to pass for 
nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.'^ 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the tall 
trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls deserted, 
and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unperceived, and 5 
pay a devoir ° to some Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress 
(that should have been ours) w^hose portrait seems to smile 
upon their overlooked beadsman, ° and to adopt me for their 
own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and 
sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality : the** immense caves 10 
of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses ; ovens w^hose 
first pies were baked four centuries ago ; and spits w^hich have 
cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister among the 
dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the 
Cook goes forth a Manciple."^ 15 

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being 
nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, thou wert not 
antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter 
antiquity, as thou called'st it, to look back to with blind venera- 
tion; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What 20 
mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses° ^ are 
we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which 
we for ever revert ! * The mighty future is as nothing, being 
everything ! the past is everything, being nothing ! 

What were thy dark ages 1 Surely the sun rose as brightly 25 
then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. 
Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without an 
accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed 
the face of things, and that our ancestors w^andered to and fro 
groping ! 30 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford,° what do most arride° 
and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy 
shelves 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as though 
all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their 35 
labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dor- 
mitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane 

1 Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. ° 



12 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

the leaves, their wmding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a 
shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage ; 
and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as 
the first bloom of those sciential^ apples which grew amid the 

5 happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. 
Those varioe lectlones,'' so tempting to the more erudite palates, 
do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Hercuianean 
raker. The credit of the three witnesses^ might have slept un- 

10 impeached for nle. I leave these curiosities to Porson,"" and to 
G. D.° — whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some 
rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, in 
a nook at Oriel.° With long poring, he is grown almost into a 
book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. 

15 1 longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place. 
He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.^ 

D. is assiduous in. his visits to these seats of learning. No 
inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I apprehend, 
is consumed in journeys between them and Cliftbrd's-inn — 

20 where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his 
unconscious abode, amid an incongruous assembly of attorneys, 
attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin of the law, 
among whom he sits, " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs 
of the law pierce him not — the winds of litigation blow over 

25 his humble chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat 
as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none 
thinks of offering violence or injustice to him —you would as 
soon " strike an abstract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of labo- 

SOrious years, in an investigation into all curious matter con- 
nected with the two Universities; and has lately lit upon a 

MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by which he hopes 

to settle some disputed points — particularly that long contro- 
versy between them as to priority of foundation. The ardour 

35 with which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, 
has not met with all the encouragement it deserved, either here, 

or at C . Your caputs, and heads of colleges, care less 

than anybody else about these questions. — Contented to suck 
the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without inquiring 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 13 

into the venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such 
curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. They have their 
good glebe lands in manu, and care not much to rake into the 
title-deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for 
D. is not a man to complain. 5 

D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted him. 
A priori it was not very probable that we should have met in 
Oriel. But D. w^ould have done the same, had I accosted him 
on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford 's-inn, or in the 
Temple. In addition to a provoking short-sightedness (the 10 
effect of late studies and watchings at the midnight oil) D. is 
the most absent of men. He made a call the other morning at 
our friend M.'s° in Bedford- square ; and, finding* nobody at 
home, was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and ink, 
with great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name in the 15 
book — w^hich ordinarily lies about in such places, to record the 
failures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his 
leave w^ith many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some 
two or three hours after, his walking destinies returned him into 
the same neighbourhood again, and again the quiet image of 20 
the fireside circle at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen 
Lar,° with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irresistibly on his 
fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they were " cer- 
tainly not to return from the country before that ddij week"), 
and disappointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper as 25 
before : again the book is brought, and in the line just above 
that in which he is about to print his second name (his re- 
script) — his first name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like 
another Sosia,° or as if a man should suddenly encounter his 
own duplicate ! — The effect may be conceived. D. made many 30 
a good resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he 
will not keep them too rigorously. 

For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is sometimes 
(not to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At 
the very time when, personally encountering thee, he passes on 35 
with no recognition or, being stopped, starts like a thing- 
surprised — at that moment. Reader, he is on Mount Tabor — 
or Parnassus'^ — or co-sphered with Plato° — or, with Harring- 
ton,° framing ^'immortal commonwealths" — devising some 



14 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

plan of amelioration to thy country, or thy species perad- 

venture meditating some individual kindness or courtesy, to be 
done to thee thyself, the returning consciousness of which made 
him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. 
5 D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such 
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of 
his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. The 
Cam° and the Isis° are to him " better than all the waters of 
Damascus.° " On the Muses' hilP he is happy, and good, as 
10 one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains'^ ; and when 
he goes about with you to show^ you the halls and colleges, you 
think you have wdth you the Interpreter at the House Beauti- 
ful.° 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO 

In Mr. Lamb's " Works,^ " published a year or two since, I 

15 find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,^ such as it w^as, or 
now appears to him to have been, between the years 1782 and 
1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing at Christ's 
was nearly corresponding wdth his ; and, with all gratitude to 
him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has con- 

20 trived to bring together whatever can be said in praise of them, 
dropping all the other side of the argument most ingenioush^ 
I remember L. at school ; and can w^ell recollect that he had 
some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his school- 
fellows had not. His friends lived in town, and w^ere near at 

25 hand ; and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost as 
often as he washed, through some invidious distinction, which 
was denied to us. The present w^orthy sub-treasurer to the 
Inner Temple can explain how that happened. He had his tea 
and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our 

30 quarter of a penny loaf — our crug — moistened with attenuated 

1 Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 15 

small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern 
jack it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue 
and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and chok- 
ing, were enriched for him with a slice of " extraordinary bread 
and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's 5 
mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three ban- 
yan° to four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his 
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to 
make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. 
In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef 10 
on Thursdays (strong as caro equina^), with detestable marigolds 
floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton 
scrags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but grudging, 
portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tues- 
days (the only dish which excited our appetites, and disap- 15 
pointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion) — he had his 
hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics 
unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen (a 
great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I 
remember the good old relative® (in whom love forbade pride) 20 
squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the clois- 
ters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale° than those cates° 
which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite°) ; and the con- 
tending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for 
the bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and the manner of 25 
its bringing ; sympathy for those who were too many to share 
in it ; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the pas- 
sions !) predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame, 
and awkwardness, and a troubling over-consciousness. 

I w^as a poor friendless boy.° My parents, and those who 30 
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances 
of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in 
the great city, after a little forced notice, wdiich they had the 
grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired 
of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, 35 
though I thought them few enough ; and, one after another, 
they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred 
playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early home- 



16 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

stead ! The yearning^s which I used to have towards it in those 
unfledged ye^rs ! How, in my dreams, would my native town 
(far in the west) come back, with its chmxh, and trees, and 
faces! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my 

5 heart exclaim upon sweet Cahie in Wiltshire^ ! 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the 
recollection of those friendless holidays. The long warm days 
of SLimmei- never return but th-'y bring with them a gloom from 
the haunting memory of those whole-day leaves, when, by some 

10 strange arrangement, we were turned out, for the livelong day, 
upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. 
I rememher those bathing-excursions to the New River, which 
L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for he 
was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such water- 

15 pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into the fields ; 
and strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like 
young dace in the streams; getting us appetites for noon, which 
those of us that w^ere penniless (our scanty morning crust long 
since exhausted) had not the means of allaying — while the 

20 cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and 
we had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the 
day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, 
setting a keener edge upon them! — How faint and languid, 
finally, we would return, towards night-fall, to our desired mor- 

25 sel, half-rejoicing, half -reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy 
liberty had expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the 
streets objectless — shivering at cold window^s of print-shops, to 
extract a little amusement ; or haply, as a last resort, in the 

30 hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeated visit (where 
our individual faces should be as well knowm to the warden as 
those of his own charges) to the Lions in the Tower — to whose 
levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to 
admission. 

35 L.'s governor"^ (so we called the patron who presented us to 
the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. 
Any complaint which he had to make was sure of being at- 
tended to. This was understood at Christ's, and was an effec- 
tual screen to him against the severity of masters, or worse 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 17 

tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes 
ai'e heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have been called 
out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the coldest winter 
nights — and this not once, but night after night — in my shirt, 
to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other 5 
sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has 
been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the 
six last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of 
us slept, answerable for an offence they neither dared to com- 
mit, nor had the power to hinder. — The same execrable tyr-10 
anny drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our 
feet were perishing with snow ; and, under the cruellest penal- 
ties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay 
in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the 
day's sports. 15 

There was one H , who, I learned in after days, was seen 

expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter 
myself in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, 
who vsuffered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts, — some few 
years since ? My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument 20 
of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero° actually 
branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and 
nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contributions, to the 
one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible 
as it may vseem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a 25 
young flame of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep 
upon the leads of the ward, as they called our dormitories. 
This game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast, 
not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier than 
Caligula's minion,^ could he have kept his own .counsel — but, 30 
foolisher, alas! than any of his species in the fables — waxing 
fat, and kicking,^ in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute 
would needs proclaim his good fortune to the world below ; and, 
laying out his simple throat, blew such a rahi's horn blast, as 
(toppling down the walls of his own Jericho)^ set concealment 35 
any longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with certain 
attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never understood that the 
patron underwent any censure on the occasion. This was in 
the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 



18 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Under the same/acf/e administration, can L. have forgotten the 
cool impunity with which the nurses used to carry away openly, 
in open platters, for their own tables, one out of two of every 
hot joint, which the careful matron had been seeing scriipu- 
5 lously weighed out for our dinners ? These things were daily 
practised in that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown con- 
noisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand 
paintings "by Yerrio and others," with which it is "hung 
round and adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat 
10 boys in pictures was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory 
to him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our 
provisions carried away before our faces by harpies° ; and our- 
selves reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido)° 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 

15 L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags^ or the 
fat of fresh beef boiled; and sets it down to some superstition. 
But these unctuous morsels are never grateful to young palates 
(children are universally fat-haters) and in strong, coarse, boiled 
meats, unsalted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was 

20 equivalent to a goul^ and held in equal detestation. suf- 
fered under the imputation : 

.... 'Twas said 
He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the rem- 
25 nants left at his table (not many, nor very choice fragments, 
you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, these disrepu- 
table morsels, which he would convey away, and secretly stow 
in the settle that stood at his bedside. [N'one saw when he ate 
them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured them in the 
30 night. He was watched, but no traces of such midnight prac- 
tices were discoverable. Some reported, that, on leave-days, he 
had been seen to carry out of the bounds a large blue check 
handkerchief, full of something. This then must be the ac- 
cursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he 
35 could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This 
belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 19 

spake to him. No one would play with him. He was excom- 
municated ; put out of the pale of the school. He was too 
powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of 
that negative punishment, which is more grievous than many 
stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was observed by two 5 
of his schoolfellows, who were determined to get at the secret, 
and had traced him one leave-day for that purpose, to enter a 
large worn-out building, such as there exist specimens of in 
Chancery-lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism, 
with ,open door, and a common staircase. After him they 10 
silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, and 
saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged 
woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. 
The informers had secured their victim. They had him in 
their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution 15 
most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward 
(for this happened a little after my time), with that patient 
sagacity which tempered all his conduct, determined to inves- 
tigate the matter, before he proceeded to sentence. The result 
was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers 20 

of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of , 

an honest couple come to decay, — whom this seasonable supply 
had, in all probability, saved from mendicancy : and that this 
young stork, at the expense of his own good name, had all this 
while been only feeding the old birds! — The governors on 25 
this occasion, much to their honour, voted a present relief to 

the family of , and presented him with a silver medal. The 

lesson which the steward read upon rash judgment, on the 

occasion of publicly delivering the medal to , I believe, 

would not be lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, 30 

but I well remember . He was a tall, shambling youth, 

with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile > 
prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. 
I think I heard he did not do quite so w^ell by himself as he had 
done by the old folks. 35 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in fetters, 
upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was not 
exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initiation. I was 
of tender years, barely turned of seven ; and had only read of 



20 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

such things in books, or seen thera but in dreams. I was told 
he had run away. This was the punishment for the first olt'ence. 
— As a novice I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. 
These were little, square, Bedlam cells, where a boy could just 
5 lie at his length upon straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think, 
w^as afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, let in askance, 
from a prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here 
the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight of 
any but the porter who brought him his l3read and water — 

10 who might not speak to him; — or of the beadle, w^ho came twice 
a week to call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, 
which was almost welcome, because it separated him for a brief 
interval from solitude : — and here he w^as shut up by himself 
of nights^ out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever hor- 

ISrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his time of 
life, might subject him to.^ This was the penalty for the 
second offence. Wouldst thou like, Reader, to see what be- 
came of him in the next degree ? 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 

20 whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 
brought forth, as at some ^o\em.n-auto-da-fe,^ arrayed in uncouth 
and most appalling attire ; all trace of his late " watchet-weeds° " 
carefully effaced, he was exposed in a jacket, resembling those 
which London lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap 

25 of the same. The effect of this divestiture was such as the 
ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. With his pale 
and frighted features, it was as if some of those disfigurements 
in Dante° had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was 
brought into the hall (L.'s favourite state-room'), /where awaited 

30 him the whole number of his schoolfellows, whose joint lessons 
and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful 

. presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the 
executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; and 

1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, 
at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the 
sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — 
This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain ; 
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) me thinks I could 
willingly spit upon his statue. 



CHRIST^S HOSPITAL 21 

of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in these 
extremities visible. These were governors ; two of whom, by 
choice, or charter, were always accustomed to officiate at these 
Ultima Stipplicia° ; not to mitigate (so at least we understood 
it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, 5 
and Peter Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, 
when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was 
ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging was, 
after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor 
accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were gen- 10 
erally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting cir- 
cumstances, to make accurate report with our eyes of the degree 
of corporal suffering inflicted. Keport, of course, gave out the 
back knotty and livid. After scourging, he was made over, in 
his San Benito,'^ to his friends, if he had any (but commonly 15 
such poor runagates were friendless), or to his parish officer, 
who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted 
to him on the outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to 
spoil the general mirth of the community. We had plenty of 20 
exercise and recreation after school hours; and, for myself, I 
must confess, that I was never happier than in them. The 
Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were held in the same 
room ; and an imaginary line only divided their bounds. Their 
character was as different as that of the inhabitants on the two 25 
sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James Boyer° was the Upper 
Master, but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion 
of the apartment, of which I had the good fortune to be a mem- 
ber. We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did 
just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an 30 
accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any trouble it gave 
us, we might take two years in getting through the verbs depo- 
nent, and another two in forgetting all that we had learned 
about them. There was now and then the formality of saying 
a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the shoul- 35 
ders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. 
Field never used the rod ; and in truth he wielded the cane 
with no great goodwill — holding it " like a dancer. ° " It looked 
in his hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of 



22 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

authority; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was 
a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor 
perhaps set any great consideration upon the value of juvenile 
time. He came among us, now and then, but often staid away 
5 whole days from us; and when he came, it made no difference 
to us — he had his private room to retire to, the short time he 
staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and up- 
roar went on. We had classics of our own, without being be- 
holden to " insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current 

10 among us — Peter Wilkins° — the Adventures of the Hon. Cap- 
tain Robert Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-coat Boy — and the 
like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific opera- 
tions ; making little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those in- 
genious parentheses, called cat-cradles : or making dry peas to 

15 dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military 
over that laudable game " French and English," and a hundred 
other such devices to pass away the time — mixing the useful 

^ with the agreeable — as would have made the souls of Rous- 
seau° and eJohn Locke° chuckle to have seen us. 

20 Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines who 
affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman, the scholar, and 
the Christian; but, I know not how, the first ingredient is 
generally found to be the predominating dose in the composi- 
tion. He was engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow 

25 at some episcopal levee, when he should have been attending 
upon us. He had for many years the classical charge of a 
hundred children, during the four or five first years of their 
education ; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further 
than two or three of the introductory fables of Phsedrus.^ How 

30 things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who 
was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, always 
affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not 
strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions, that 
he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we presented 

35 to his end of the school. We were a sort of Helots° to his young 
Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to 
borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic^ 
grin, observe to one of his upper boys, '^ how neat and fresh the 
twigs looked." While his pale students were battering their 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 23 

brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that 
enjoined by the 8amite,° we were enjoying ourselves at our ease 
in our little Goshen. ° We saw a little into the secrets of his 
discipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to 
our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us ; his storms came 5 
near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle," while 
all around were drenched, our fleece w^as dry.^ His boys turned 
out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage in 
temper. His pupils cannot speak of him wdthout something of 
terror allaying their gratitude ; the remembrance of Field comes 10 
back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer 
slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Ely- 
sian° exemptions, and life itself a "playing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, 
we w^ere near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of 15 
his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Uhilantes,^ 
and caught glances of Tartarus. ° B. was a rabid pedant. His 
English style w^as crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems 
(for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grat- 
ing as scrannel pipes. °- — He w^ould laugh, ay, and heartily, 20 

but then it must be at Flaccus's^ quibble about Rex or at 

the trisds severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence" — 
thin jests, which at their first broaching coald hardly have had 
vis enough to move a Roman muscle. — He had two wigs, both 
pedantic, but of differiHg omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh 25 
powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old discoloured, 
unkempt, angry caxon," denoting frequent and bloody execu- 
tion. Woe to the school, when he made his morning appear- 
ance in his passy, or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. 
— J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty 30 

1 Cowley." 

2 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth 
a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more 
flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under 
the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 
chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick,° 
but the town did not give it their sanction. — B. used to say of it, in a 
way of half-compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for repre- 
sentation. 



24 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry 
upon its lips) with a '^ Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits 
at meV" — Nothing was more common than to see him make a 
headlong entry into the school-room, from his inner recess, or 

5 library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, 
" Od's ray life. Sirrah," (his favourite adjuration) " I have a great 
mind to whip you," — then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, 
fling back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of some 
minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten 

10 the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imper- 
fect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the exple- 
tory yell — ^' and I will, too.'' — In his gentler moods, w4ien 
the rahidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious 
method, peculiar, from w^hat I have heard, to himself, of whipping 

15 the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same time ; a paragraph, 
and a lash between ; which in those times, when parliamentary 
oratory was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, 
was not calculated to impress the patient with a veneration for 
the diffuser graces of rhetoric. 

20 Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall in- 
effectual from his hand — when droll squinting W having 

been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use 
for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify 
himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not know that 

25 the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of 
any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so irre- 
sistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue him- 
self not excepted) that remission was unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. 

30 Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a more intelligi- 
ble and ample encomium on them. The author of the Country 
Spectator doubts not to compare him with the ablest teachers 
of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than with 
the pious ejaculation of C. — when he heard that his old mas- 

35ter was on his death-bed — "Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults 
be forgiven ; and may he be w^afted to bliss by little cherub 
boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his 
sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. — First 



CHRIST^S HOSPITAL 25 

Grecian^ of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of 
boys and men, since Co-gram mar -master (and inseparable com- 
panion) with Dr. T e. What an edifying spectacle did this 

brace of friends present to those who reaiembered the anti- 
socialities of their predecessors! — You never met the one by 5 
chance in the street without a wonder, which was quickly dis- 
sipated by the almost immediate subappearance of the other. 
Generally arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for 
each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, 
in advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, the other 10 
was not long in discovering that it suited him to lay down the 
fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same 
arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to 
turn over the Cicer^o De Ainicitid^ or some tale of Antique 
Friendship, which the young heart even then was burning to 15 

anticipate! — Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has since 

executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the 

Northern courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, 

sparing of speech, with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Mid- 
dleton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and 20 
a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excel- 
lent critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a 
Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. — M. is said to 
bear his mitre° high in India, where the regni novitas (1 dare 
say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite as 25 
primitive as that of JeweP or Hooker'^ might not be exactly 
fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo- Asiatic diocesans 
with a reverence for home institutions, and the church which 
those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though 
firm, were mild and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not senior 30 
to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal Bi'itons, the 
most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious 

Grecian. — Then followed poor S , ill-fated M 1 of these 

the Muse is silent. 

Finding some of Edward's race 35 

Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring 
of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column ° before thee — the 



26 TBE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logi- 
cian, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen the casual passer 
through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration 
(while he w^eighed the disproportion between the speech and 
5 the garh of the young Mirandula°), to hear thee unfold, in thy 
deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or 
Plotinus° (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such 
philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar° 
while the walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed to the 

10 accents of the inspired charity -boy ! — Many were the "wit-com- 
bats " (to dally awhile with the words of old ruller°) between 

him and C. Y. Le G , "which two I behold like a Spanish 

great galleon, and an English man of war : Master Coleridge, 
like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow 

15 in his performances ; C. V. L., with the English man of war, 
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, 
tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness 
of his wit and invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, ° 

20 with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which 
thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in thy cogni- 
tion of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipation of some 
more material, and peradventure practical one, of thine own. 
Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with 

25 which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus° of the school), in the 
days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of 
infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, 
turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy angel- 
look, excihanged the half-formed terrible " bl ," for a gentler 

30 greeting — " bless thy handsome face I " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends 

of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who impelled, the 

former by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of 
neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are 

35 sometimes subject to in our seats of learning — exchanged their 
Alma Mater for the camp; perishing, one by climate, and one 

on the plains of Salamanca: — Le G , sanguine, volatile, 

sweet-natured ; F , dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, 

warm-hearted, with something of the old Roman height about 

40 him. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 27 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hertford, 

with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — and both 

my good friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians in my 
time. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

The human species, according to the best theory I can form 5 
of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and 
the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be 
reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and 
Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers 
upon earth, ^' Parthians,° and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, lO 
and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary dis- 
tinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I chose 
to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port,° 
and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born 
degraded. " He shall serve his brethren." There is something 15 
in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious^ ; contrasting 
with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages — 
Alcibiades° — Falstaif ° — Sir Richard Steele^ — our late incom- 
parable Brinsley° — what a family likeness in all four ! 20 

What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower ! what 
rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he 
manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies °! What con- 
tempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine especially) 
no better than dross ! What a liberal confounding of those 25 
pedantic distinctions of meum and^wwm / or rather, what a noble 
simplification of language (beyond Tooke'^), resolving these sup- 
posed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! 
— What near approaches doth he make to the primitive com- 
munity, — to the extent of one half of the principle at least ! 30 

He is the true taxer who "calleth all the world up to be 
taxed° ; '* and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, 
as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and the poorest 
obolary° Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem ! — His 



28 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air ! So far 
removed from your sour parochial or state-gatheiers, — those 
ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their 
faces ! He cometli to you with a smile, and troubleth you with 
5 no receipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is 
his Candlemas,° or his feast of Holy Michael.*^ He applieth the 
lene tormentuni^ of a pleasant look to your purse, — which to 
that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally as 
the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind contended ! 

10 He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth! The sea which 
taketh handsomely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, 
whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with destiny; he is 
in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend — 
that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the 

15 reversion promised. ° Combine not preposterously in thine 
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives° ! — but, when 
thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it 
were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice ! See how light 
he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. 

20 Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by 
the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who parted this 
life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived, without 
much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from mighty 
ancestors of that name, w^ho heretofore held ducal dignities in this 

25 realm. In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock 
to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself invested 
with ample revenues; which, with that noble disinterestedness 
which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he 
took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring 

30 to nothing : for there is something revolting in the idea of a 
king holding a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod w^ere 
all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment ; 
getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as 
one sings) 

35 To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than promiDt her to do aught may merit praise, 

he set forth, like some Alexander,'^ upon his great enterprise, 
" borrowing and to borrow ! " 



THE TWO RAGES OF MEN 29 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this 
island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of 
the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate 
as greatly exaggerated: — but having had the honour of 
accompanying my friend, divers times, in his perambula-5 
tions about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first 
with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed 
a sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so 
obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were 
his tributaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good lo 
friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to whom he 
had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes 
did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in number- 
ing them ; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be " stocked 
with so fair a herd." 15 

With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep 
his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, 
which he had often in his mouth, that '' money kept longer 
than three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was 
fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent 20 
toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally 
tossing and hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs, 
or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, or deep 
holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; — or he would bury it 
(where he would never seek it again) by a river's side under 25 
some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no inter- 
est — but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as 
Hagar's offspring^ into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He 
never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc.° 
When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had 30 
the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to 
contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way 
with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, 
a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana Jides).^ He an- 
ticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while 35 
my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most un- 
theorising reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his 
pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his 
nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no 



30 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by 
his mumping° visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing better ; 
and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations 
you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal. 
5 When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; his swell 
of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how great at 
the midnight hour ; and when I compare with him the com- 
panions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving 
of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society 

10 of lenders, and little men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather 
covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators 
more formidable than that which I have touched upon ; I mean 
your borrowers of hooks — those mutilators of collections, spoilers 

15 of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There 
is Comberbatch,° matchless in his depredations ! 
• That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great 
eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little 
back study in Bloomsbury, Reader!) — with the huge Switzer- 

20 like° tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants,° in their 
reformed posture, guard ant of nothing)° once held the tallest 
of my folios. Opera Bonaventurce^ choice and massy divinity, to 
which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser 
calibre, — Bellarmine,° and Holy Thomas), ° showed but as 

25 dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart° ! — that Comberbatch abstracted 
upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I con- 
fess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that " the title 
to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance) is in exact 
ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciat- 

30 ing the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which 
of our shelves is safe ? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves from 
the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a 
loser — was whilom° the commodious resting place of Browne 

35 on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more 
about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and 
was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties 
— but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in 
the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than him- 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 31 

self. — Just below, Dodsley's° dramas want their fourth volume, 
where Vittoria Corombona° is ! The remainder nine are as dis- 
tasteful as Priam's refuse^ sons, w^hen the Fates borroived Hec- 
tor. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy,^ in sober state. 

— There loitered the Complete Angler^; quiet as in life, by 5 
some stream side. — In yonder nook, John Buncle,° a widower- 
volume, with '*eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like 
the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he 
throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small 10 
under-collection of this nature (my friend's gatherings in his 
various calls), picked up, he has forgotten at what odd places, 
and deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in these 
orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are 
welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunc-15 
tion ; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little dis- 
posed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I charge no 
warehouse-room for these deodands,° nor shall ever put myself 
to the un gentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to 
pay expenses. 20 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. 
You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, 
if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what 
moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry 
off wdth thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, 25 
the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret 
Newcastle^? — knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew 
also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of 
the illustrious folio : — what but the mere spirit of contradic- 
tion, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend? 30 

— Then, worst cut of all ! to transport it with thee to the 
Gallican land — 

Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 

A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 

Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder! 35 

hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fan- 
cies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all 
companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? Child of the 



32 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that 
part-French, better-part-English-woman ! — that she could ^^ 
upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remem- 
bering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook° — of 

5 which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, 
was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle ! Was 
there not Zimmerman^ on Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, 
be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, 

10 lend thy books ; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will 
return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with 
usury ; enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have 
had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in 
matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, 

15 vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in 
my r)aniel°; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those 
abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in 
Pagan lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy 
library, against S. T. C. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 

20 Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, in every 
year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects 
his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial man- 
ner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observ- 
ances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birthday hath 

25 nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing 
at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond 
cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an inter- 
est too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one 
ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is 

30 that from which all date their time, and count upon what is 
left. It is the nativity of our common Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest border- 
ing upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal which 
rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up 



NEW YEAR'S EZE 33 

of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been 
diffused over the past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, 
performed or neglected, in that regretted time. I begin to 
know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal 
colour ; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, ° when 5 
he exclaimed — 

I saw the skirts of the departing Year, 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us 
seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am 
sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night ; though some 10 
of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration 
at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets 
for. the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those 
who — 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new books, new 
faces, new years, — from some mental twist which makes it 
difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased 
to hope ; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other 
(former years). I plunge into foregone visions and conclu-20 
sions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappointments. I am 
armour-proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or over- 
come in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again /or love, as 
the gamesters phrase it, games for which I once paid so dear. 
I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and 25 
events of my life reversed. I w^ould no more alter them than 
the incidents of some well-contrived novel. Methinks, it is 
better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest 
years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of 
Alice W — n,° than that so passionate a love adventure should 30 
be lost. It was better that our family should have missed that 
legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have 
at this moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without 
the idea of that specious old rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back 35 
upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox when I say, 



34 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may 
have leave to love himself wiXhoui the imputation of self-love? 
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspec- 
tive — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect for 
5 his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know 
him to be light, and vain, and humoiirsome ; a notorious 
* * * ; addicted to * * * ; averse from 
counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it; — * * * 
besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and 

10 spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou 
canst be willing to lay at his door — but for the child Elia — 
that ''other me," there, in the background — I must take leave 
to cherish the remembrance of that young master — with as 
little reference, I protest, to his stupid changeling of five and 

15 forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of 
my parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at five, and 
rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon 
the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the 
gentle posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that un- 

20 known had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any 
the least colour of falsehood. — God help thee, Elia, how art 
thou changed^ ! — Thou art sophisticated. — I know how honest, 
how courageous (for a weakling) it was — how religious, how 
imaginative, how hopeful ! From what have I not fallen, if the 

25 child I remember was indeed myself, — and not some dissem- 
bling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to 
my unpractised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being ! 
That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in 
such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyn- 

30 crasy. Or is it owing to another cause: simply, that being 
without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself 
enough out of myself ; and having no offspring of my own to 
dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early 
idea, as my heir and favourite ? If these speculations seem f an- 

35tastical to thee. Reader — (a busy man, perchance), if I tread 
out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly conceited 
only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud 
of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character 



J^EW YEAR'S EVE 35 

not likely to let slip the sacred observance cf any old institu- 
tion ; and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them 
with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. — In those days the 
sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise 
hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of 5 
pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived 
what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned 
me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never 
feels practically that he is mortal. He know^s it indeed, and, if 
need w^ere, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; 10 
but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot 
June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days 
of December. But now, shall I confess a truth ? — I feel these 
audits^ but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities 
of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments 15 
and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In proportion as 
the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their 
periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke 
of the great wheel. 1 am not content to pass away " like a 
weaver's shuttle.^" Those metaphors solace me not, nor 20 
sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not 
to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to 
eternity ; and reluct^ at the inevitable course of destiny. I am 
in love with this green earth ; the face of town and country ; 
the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of 25 
streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content 
to stand still at the age to which I am arrived ; I, and my 
friends : to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not 
want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they 
say, into the grave. — Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in 30 
diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household 
gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without 
blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores.^ A new 
state of being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer 35 
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of 
meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle- 
light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, 
and irony itself — do these things go out with life ? 



36 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are 
pleasant with him V 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios : must I part with 

the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my em- 

5 braces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by 

some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this 

familiar process of reading ? 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indica- 
tions which point me to them here, — the recognisable face — 

10 the " sweet assurance of a look " ? 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give it 
its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset me. 
In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is 
almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as 

15 myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon.^ 
Then we are as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and 
a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me 
in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait 
upon that master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity ; 

20 moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, — 
that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus* sickly sister,° like that 
innutritions one denounced in the Canticles^ : — I am none of 
her minions — I hold with the Persian.^ 

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death 

25 unto my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that 

• capital plague-sore. — I have heard some profess an indifference 
to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; 
and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may 
slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death but out 

30 upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, 
execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to six score thou- 
sand devils, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but 
shunned as an universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and 
spoken evil of ! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, 

35 thou thin, melancholy Privation, or more frightful and con- 
founding Positive ! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are 
altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satis- 
faction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and 



JVEW YEAR'S EVE 37 

emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted 
the society of such bedfellows ? — or, forsooth, that " so shall the 
lairest tace appear "?— why, to comfort me, must Alice W— n 
be a gobhn ? More than all, I conceive disgust at those imper- 
tment and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordi-5 
nary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself 
to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that " Such as he 
now IS, I must shortly be/' Not so shortlv, friend, perhaps, as 
thou imagmest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about 
I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! Thy New 10 
Years days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. 
Another cup of wine — and while that turncoat bell, that iust 
now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with 
changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its 
peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. 15 



THE NEW YEAR 

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 

Tells us, the day himself 's not far : 

And see where, breaking from the night, 

He gilds the western hills with light. 90 

With him old Janus doth appear 

Peeping into the future year, 

With such a look as seems to say 

The prospect is not good that way. 

Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; ^^ 

When the prophetic fear of things 

A more tormenting mischief brings, 

More full of soul tormenting gall 

Than direst mischiefs can befall. 

But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight, 

Better informed by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow 

That all contracted seem'd but now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste, ok 

And frown upon the ills are past; ^ 

But that which this way looks is clear, 

And smiles upon the New-bom Year. 

He looks too from a place so high, 

The year lies open to his eye ; 



30 



40 



38 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

And all the momeuts opeu are 
To the exact discoverer. 
Yet more and more he smiles upon 
The happy revolution. 
5 Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year, 
So smiles upon us the first morn, 
And speaks us good so soon as born ? 
Plague on't! the last was ill enough, 

10 This cannot but make better proof ; 

Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 

The last, why so we may this too ; 

And then the next in reason shou'd 

Be superexcellently good : 
15 For the worst ills (we daily see) 

Have no more perpetuity 

Than the best fortunes that do fall ; 

Which also bring us wherewithal 

Longer their being to support, 
20 Than those do of the other sort : 

And. who has one good year in three, 

And yet repines at destiny, 

Appears ungrateful in the case, 

And merits not the good he has. 
25 Then let us welcome the New Guest 

With lusty brimmers of the best ; 

Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 

And renders e'en Disaster sweet: 

And though the Princess turn her back, 
30 Let us but line ourselves with sack. 

We better shall by far hold out, 

Till the next Year she face about. 

How say you, Reader — do not these verses smack of the 
rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not 

35 fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive of 
sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where 
be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected? 
— Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging sunlight of 
clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of genuine Heli- 

40 con, your only Spa'^ for these hypochondries. And now another 
cup of the generous ! and a merry New Year, and many of 
them, to you all, my masters ! 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 39 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

" A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game." 
This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with 
God), who, next to h6r devotions, loved a good game at whist. 
She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half 
players, who have no objection to take a hand, if you want one 5 
to make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no pleasure 
in winning; that they like to win one game, and lose another; 
that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card- 
table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will 
desire an adversary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take it 10 
up and play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse 
of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such 
it may be said that they do not play at cards, but only play at 
playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, 15 
as I do, from her heart and soul ; and w^ould not, save upon a 
striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table 
with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined 
enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She hated favours. 
She never made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adver- 20 
sary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a 
good fight : cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her 
cards) "like a dancer." She sate bolt upright; and neither 
showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All people 
have their blind side — their superstitions; and I have heard 25 
her declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the 
best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was 
her turn to play; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game; 
or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never intro- 30 
duced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its 
process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards ; and 
if I ever saw unmingied distaste in her fine last-century counte- 
nance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary 
turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; 35 
and who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he thought 



40 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after 
serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear 
to have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her facul- 
ties, considered in that light. It was her business, her duty, 
5 the thing she came into the world to do, — and she did it. She 
unbent her mind afterwards — over a book. 

Pope° was her favourite author : his Rape of the Lock her 
favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over with 
me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in that 

10 poem; and to explain to me how far it agreed wdth, and in 
what points it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her 
illustrations were apposite and poignant; and I had the pleas- 
ure of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles^ ; but I 
suppose they came too late to be inserted among his ingenious 

15 notes upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but 
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, 
w^as showy and specious, and likely to allure young persons. 
The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners — a thing which 

20 the constancy of whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and regal 
investiture of Spadille° — absurd, as she justly observed, in the 

. pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him 
no proper power above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the 
giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone ; — 

25 above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole,^ 
— to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel 
or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she 
would say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the young 
and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game : that was 

30 her w^ord. It was a long meal ; not, like quadrille, a feast of 
snatches. One or tw^o rubbers might coextend in duration with 
an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cul- 
tivate steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, capri- 
cious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes 

35 of quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral 
embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by MachiaveP : 
perpetually changing postures and connexions; bitter foes to- 
day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching in a 
breath ; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, 



MRS. BATTLERS OPINIONS ON WHIST 41 

steady, deep-i'ooted, rational antipathies of the great French and 
English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her 
favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in 
cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most irra- 5 
tional of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : — that 
any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the 
same mark and colour, without reference to the playing of the 
game, or the individual w^orth or pretensions of the cards them- 
selves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition 10 
at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised super- 
ficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things. — Suits 
were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity of 
array to distinguish them : but w^hat should we say to a foolish 
squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry 15 
in red jackets, that never were to be marshalled — never to take 
the field? — She even w^ished that v»^hist were more simple than 
it is ; and, in my mind, would have stripped it of some append- 
ages, which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and 
even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the de- 20 
ciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit 
always trumps ? — Why two colours, when the mark of the suits 
would have sufficiently distinguished them without it? 

" But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with 
the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — he must 25 
have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman 
Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in 
many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensualising 
would have kept out. — You, yourself, have a pretty collection 
of paintings — but confess to me, whether, walking in your 30 
gallery at Sandham, among those clear Yandykes,° or among 
the Paul Potters^ in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom 
glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have 
it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged 
assortment of the court-cards? — the pretty antic habits, like 35 
heralds in a procession — the gay triumph -assuring scarlets — 
the contrasting deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty of 
spades ' — Pam° in all his glory ! — 

"All these might be dispensed with; and with their naked 



42 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on very 
well, pictureless; but the beauty of cards would be extinguished 
for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must 
degenerate into mere gambling. — Imagine a dull deal board, 
5 or dram head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant 
carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly comba- 
tants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in! — Exchange 
those delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese 
artist, unconscious of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting 

10 their true application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman 
that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — exchange 
them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk 
and a slate ! " — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my 

15 logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite 
topic that evening I have always fancied myself indebted for the 
legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna 
marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer,° whom 
I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from Florence : 

20 — this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her 
death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept 
with religious care ; though she herself, to confess a truth, was 
never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar 

25 game, I have heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who 
was very partial to it. She could never heartily bring her 
mouth to pronounce " (9o," or " That's a go." She called it an 
ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew 
her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake), because she would 

30 not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would have 
given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgrace- 
ful tenure of declaring " two for his heels.'' There is something 
extremely genteel in this sort of seK-denial. Sarah Battle was 
a gentlewoman born. 

35 Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, 
though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms — such as 
pique — repique — the capot — they savoured (she thought) of 
affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never greatly 
cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue 



MBS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 43 

thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with glory. But 
cards are war, in disguise of a sport : when single adversaries 
encounter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, 
it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. 
No looker on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a 5 
mere affair of money ; he cares not for your luck sympathetically^ 
or for your play. — Three are still worse ; a mere naked war of 
every man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or 
alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a 
succession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty 10 
infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in square games {she 
meant whist) , all that is possible to be attained in card-playing 
is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit with 
honour, common to every species — though the latter can be 
but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 15 
spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist 
are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to them- 
selves, and a looker on is not wanted. He is rather worse than 
nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or 
interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising 20 
stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an inter- 
ested — bystander witnesses it, but because your jt?rt?'^?ier sym- 
pathises in the contingency. You win for tw^o. You triumph 
for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking 25 
off the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are 
better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The 
hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War 
becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these the old 
lady was accustomed to defend her favourite pastime. 30 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any 
game, where chance entered into the composition, for nothing. 
Chance, she would argue — and here again, admire the subtlety 
of her conclusion ! — chance is nothing, but where something 
else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. 35 
W^hat ratiohal cause of exultation could it give to a man to 
turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself ? or before 
spectators, where no stake was depending? — Make a lottery of 
a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate number — 



44 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

and what possible principle of our nature, except stupid won- 
derment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times 
successively, without a prize ? Therefore she disliked the 
mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played 
5 for money. She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who 
were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games 
of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, 
they were a mere system of overreaching. Played for glory, 
they were a mere setting of one man's wit, — his memory, or 

10 combination-faculty rather — against another's ; like a mock- 
engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. — She could 
not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance, 
the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at 
chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the 

15 centre, w^ould inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. 
Those well-cut similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery 
of the board, she would argue (and I think in this case justly), 
were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hardhead con- 
tests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form 

20 and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the 
proper arena for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad 
passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He 
must be always trying to get the better in something or 

25 other : — that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended 
than upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary illu- 
sion ; in truth, a mere drama ; for we do but play at being 
mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, 
during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as those whose 

30 stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fight- 
ing ; much ado, great battling, and little bloodshed ; mighty 
means for disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and a 
great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious 
games of life, w^hich men play, without esteeming them to be 

35 such. — 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these 
matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my life 
when playing at cards for nothing has even been agreeable. 
When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 45 

call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with my 
cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia.° 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a tooth- 
ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you are subdued and 
humble, — you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of 5 
action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick 
whist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate the 
manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to whom I should 10 
apologise. — 

At such times, those terms which my old friend objected to, 
come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a 
quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an in- 
ferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. 15 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted° her) 
— (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) ^— I wished it might have 
lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, 
though it was a mere shade of play : I would be content to go 
on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should* be ever boil- 20 
ing, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which 
Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over : and, as 
I do not much relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. 
Bridget and I should be ever playing.^ 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 

I HAVE no ear. — 25 

Mistake me not. Reader, — nor imagine that I am by nature 
destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, 
and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human 
capital. Better my mother had never borne me. — I am, I think, 
rather delicately than copiously provided with those conduits ; 30 
and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the 
mole for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets — 
those indispensable side-intelligencers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, with De- 



46 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

foe,° that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him to draw 
upon assurance — to feel " quite unabashed," and at ease upon 
that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory ; nor, 
if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, 
5 that I ever should be. 

AVhen therefore I say that I have no ear, you will understand 
me to mean — for music. To say that this heart never melted 
at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self -libel. — 
"• Water parted from the sea" never fails to move it strangely. 

10 So does " In infancy,'' But they w^ere used to be sung at her 
harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those 
days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited 
the appellation — the sweetest — w^hy should I hesitate to name 
Mrs. S , once the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the Temple 

15 — who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, 
even in his long coats; and to make him glow, tremble, and 
blush with a passion, tliat not faintly indicated the day-spring 
of that absorbing sentiment w^liich was afterwards destined to 
overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W n.° 

20 I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. 
But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practis- 
ing " God save the King " all my life ; whistling and humming 
of it over to myself in solitary corners ; and am not yet arrived, 
they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty 

25 of Elia never been impeached. 

I am not wdthout suspicion, that I have an undeveloped faculty 
of music within me. For thrumming, in my wild w^ay, on my 
friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he w^as engaged in 
an adjoining parlour, — on his return he was pleased to say, " he 

30 thought it could not he the maid ! " On his first surprise at hearing 
the keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not 
dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a 
grace, snatched from a superior refinement, soon convinced him 
that some being — technically perhaps deficient, but higher in- 

35 formed from a principle common to all the fine arts — had 
swayed the keys to a mood w^hich Jenny, with all her (less cul- 
tivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I 
mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with 
any view of disparaging Jenny, 



A CHAPTER OK EARS 47 

Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet have 
I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how one note 
should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distin- 
guish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough- 
bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh 5 
and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of 
the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess 
my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am ignorant of. I 
hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sosteniito° and adagio° stand in 
the like relation of obscurity to me ; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as 10 
conjuring as Baralipton.^ 

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — (constituted 
to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious combina- 
tions, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since JubaP 
stumbled upon the gamut) — to remain, as it were, singly un- 15 
impressible to the magic influences of an art, which is said to 
have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining 
the passions. — Yet, rather than break the candid current of my 
confessions, I must avow to you that I have received a great 
deal more pain than pleasure from this so cried up faculty. 20 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's 
hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than 
midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds, 
are nothing to the measured malice of music. The ear is pas- 
sive to those single strokes ; willingly enduring stripes, while it 25 
hath no task to con. To music it cannot be passive. It will 
strive — mine at least will — 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid 
the maze ; like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hiero- 
glyphics. I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, 
and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest 30 
places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds, 
which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distr acting- 
torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge in 
the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds ; 
— and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my 35 
paradise. 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes 
of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory 
in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience !J 



48 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

immoveable, or affecting some faint emotion — till (as some 
have said, that our occupations in the next world will be but a 
shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in 
some cold Theatre in Hades,° where some of the forms of the 
5 earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoyment ; or 
like that 

-Party in a parlour 



All silent, and all damned. ° 

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, 

10 as they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehension. — 
Words are something; but to be exposed to an endless battery 
of mere sounds ; to be long a dying° ; to lie stretched upon a 
rack of roses ; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort ; to 
pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable 

15 tedious sweetness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain 
ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be 
forced to make the pictures for yourself ; to read a book, all 
stops, and be obliged to supjDly the verbal matter ; to invent 
extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inex- 

20plicable rambling mime° — these are faint shadows of what I 
have undergone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of 
this empty instrumental music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have experi- 
enced something vastly lulling and agreeable : — afterwards 

25 followeth the languor and the oppression. — Like that dis- 
appointing book in Patmos° ; or, like the comings on of 
melancholy, described by Burton, doth music make her first 
insinuating approaches : — ^'Most pleasant it is to such as are 
melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt 

30 wood and water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon 
some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect him 
most, amabilis insania, and mentis gratissiinus error. A most 
incomparable delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling 
to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they 

35 suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done. — 
So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend whole days 
and nights without sleep, even whole years in such contempla- 
tions, and fantastical meditations, which are like so many 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 49 

dreams, and will hardly be drawn from them — winding and 
unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing 
their humours, until at the last the scene turns upon a sud- 
den, and they being now habitated to such meditations and soli- 
tary places, can endure no company, can think of nothing but 5 
harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subru- 
sticus pudor° discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise 
them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else :_ con- 
tinually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infer- 
nal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their 10 
souls, representing some dismal object to their minds; which 
now, by no means, no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, 
they cannot be rid of, they cannot resist." 

Something like this " scene -turning " I have experienced 
at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic friend 15 

jSTov ; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most 

finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his 
week days into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.^ 

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn 
anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear, 20 
rambling in the side isles of the dim Abbey, some five and thirty 
years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old 
religion into my young apprehension— (whether it be that° m 
which the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, 
wisheth to himself dove's wings — or that other,'' which, with a 25 
like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means 
the young man shall best cleanse his mind) — a holy calm per- 
vadeth me. — I am for the time 

rapt above earth. 

And possess joys not promised at my birth. 30 

But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid a 
soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than 
lies in her capacity to receive — impatient to overcome her 
"earthly" with his " heavenly," — still pouring in, for pro- 
tracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or 35 

1 1 have been there, and still would go — 
'Tls like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. 



50 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

from that inexhausted German ocean, above which, in trium- 
phant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions" Haydn and 
Mozart ° with their attendant Tritons,^ Bach, Beethoven ° and a 
countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge 
5 me again in the deeps, — I stagger under the weight of har- 
mony, reeling to and fro at my wits' end; — clouds, as of frank- 
incense, oppress me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me — 
the genius of his religion hath me in her toils — a shadowy 
triple tiara° invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so 

10 ingenuous — he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anom- 
aly of dreams, a she-Pope too, — tri-coronated like himself ! — 
I am converted, and yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus hereti- 
corum° and myself grand heresiarch° : or three heresies centre 
in my person : — I am Marcion,° Ebion,° and Cerinthus° — Gog 

15andMagog° — what not? — till the coming in of the friendly 
supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true Lu- 
theran beer (in which chiefly my friend show^s himself no bigot) 
at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith ; and 
restores to me the geniline unterrifying aspects of my pleasant- 

20 countenanced host and hostess. 



ALL FOOLS' DAY 

The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and 
a merry first of April to us all ! 

Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — and you, 
Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the 

25 matter. Do not we know one another? what need of ceremony 
among friends? we have all a touch of that same — you under- 
stand me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who on 
such a day as this, the general festival, should affect to stand 
aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the corpora- 

30tion, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the 
forest to-day,° shall meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. 
Stultus sum,° Translate me that, and take the meaning of it 



ALL FOOLS' DAY 51 



bo yourself for your pains. What ! man, we have four quarters 
of the globe on our side, at the least computation. 

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will drink 
no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day — and let us troll 
the catch^ of Amiens — due ad me — due ad me — how goes it ? 5 

Here shall he see 
Gross fools as he. 

Now would I give a trifle to know, historically and authenti- 
cally, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would cer- 
tainly give him° in a bumper. Marry, of the present breed,. 10 
I think I could without much difficulty name you the party. 

Remove your cap a little further, if you please : it hides my 
bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust 
away° his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give you, for 
my part, 15 

The crazy old church clock, 

And the bewildered chimes. 

Good master Empedocles,i you are welcome. It is long since 
you went a salamander-gathering down ^tna. Worse than 
samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mercy your worship 20 
did not singe your mustachios. 

Ha! Cleombrotus 2 ! and what salads in faith did you light 
upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean V You were founder, 
I take it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists.° 

Gebir,3 niy old freemason, and prince of plasterers at Babel, 25 
bring ia your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! You have claim 
to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. 
You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight 
hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the 
sea. Bless us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call 30 

■ He who, to be deem'd 



A god, leap'd fondly into .Etna flames — 
He who, to enjoy 



Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea — 

3 The builders next of Babel on the plain 
Of Senaar — 



52 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

your top workmen to their imncheon on the low grounds of 
Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? 
I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on 
Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet v/e think it somewhat. 
6 What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — cry, baby, 
put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as 
an orange, pretty moppet ! 

Mister Adams 'odso, I honour your coat — pray do us 

the favour to read to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress 

10 Slipslop — the twenty and second in your portmanteau there — 
on Female Incontinence — the same — it will come in most irrel- 
evantly and impertinently seasonable to the time of the day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully,"^ you look wise. Pray correct 
that error. 

15 Duns,° spare your definitions. 1 must fine you a bumper, or 
a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllogistically 
this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no gentle- 
man break the tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across 
them. 

20 Master Stephen,^ you are late. — Ha! Cokes,° is it yon? — 
Aguecheek,° my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to 'you. — 
Master Shallow,^ your worship's poor servant to command. 
— Master Silence,^ I will use few words with you. — Slender,° 
it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere. — You six will 

25 engross all the poor wit of the company to-day. — I know it, I 
know it. 

Ha ! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, time 

out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless thy doublet, it is not 
over-new, threadbare as thy stories : — what dost thou flitting 

30 about the world at this rate ? — Thy customers are extinct, 
defunct, bedrid, have ceased to read long ago. — Thoa goest 
still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk a 

volume or two. — Good Granville S , thy last patron, is 

flown. 

35 King Pandion, he is dead, 

All thy friends are lapt in lead.— 

Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your seat here, 

between Armado and Quisada^; for in true courtesy, in gravity, 



ALL FOOLS' BAY 53 

in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, 
in the goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the com- 
mendation of wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those 
accomplished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me 
for ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which 5 
declares that he might be happy with either, situated between 
those two ancient spinsters — when I forget the inimitable 
formal love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and 
now to the other, with that Malvolian smile° — as if Cervantes, 
not Gay,° had written it for his hero ; and as if thousands of 10 
periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could have 
given his invidious preference between a pair of so goodly- 
propertied and meritorious-equal damsels. * * * * 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our 
Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I fear the 15 
second of April is not many hours distant — in sober verity I 
will confess a truth to thee, Keader. I love a Fool — as natu- 
rally as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, with 
childlike apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the 
matter, I read those Parables — not guessing at their involved 20 
wisdom — I had more yearnings towards that simple architect, 
that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his 
more cautious neighbour : I grudged at the hard censure pro- 
nounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent ; and — prizing 
their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my appre- 25 
hension, somewhat unfeminine wariness of their competitors — 
I felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for those 
five thoughtless virgins. — I have never made an acquaintance 
since, that lasted : or a friendship, that answered ; with any 
that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters. 30 
I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more 
laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the 
more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach 
you. I love the safety which a palpable hallucination w^arrants ; 
the security which a word out of season ratifies. And take my 35 
word for this. Reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, 
that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath 
pounds of much worse matter in his composition. It is ob- 
served, that "the foolisher the fowl or fish, — woodcocks, — 



54 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

dotterels, — cods'-heads, etc., the finer the flesh thereof/' and 
what are commonly the world's received fools but such whereof 
the world is not worthy? and what have been some of the 
kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of 
5 absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys°? — 
Keader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construction, 
it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 

Still-born Silence ! thon that art 

Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! 
10 Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind! 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 

Who makes religion mystery ! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue! 
15 Leave, thy desert shades among, 

Reverend hermit's hallowed cells, 

Where retired devotion dwells ! 

With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! i 

20 Reader, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean ; 
would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the 
multitude; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; 
would'st thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, 
without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species ; 

25 would'st thou be alone, and yet accompanied ; solitary, yet not 
desolate ; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in counte- 
nance ; a unit in aggregate ; a simple in composite : — come 
with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep as that " before the winds were 

30 made " ? go not out into the wilderness, descend not into the 
profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements °; nor 
pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faith'd self- 
mistrusting Ulysses.° — Retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 

1 From '' Poems of all sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 1653. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 55 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold his 
peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude it is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this place ? 
what the uncommunicat'ing muteness of hshes? — here the god- 
dess reigns and revels. — '* Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes 5 
loud," do not with their interconfounding nproars more aug- 
ment the brawl — nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their 
clubbed sounds — than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) 
is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by 
sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Ne- 10 
gation itself hath a positive more and less ; and closed eyes 
would seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight. 

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. 
By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. 
The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, 15 
but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers' Meeting. — Those 
first hermits did certainly understand this principle, when they 
retired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to en- 
joy one another's want of conversation. The Carthusian^ is 
bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunica- 20 
tiveness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be read- 
ing a book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting 
by — say, a wife — he, or she, too, (if that be probable) reading 
another, without interruption, or oral communication? — can 
there be no sympathy without the gabble of words? — away 25 
with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting soli- 
tariness. Give me. Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles of some cathedral, 

time-stricken ; ^ , , . 

Or under hanging mountains, 30 

Or by the fall of fountains ; 

is. but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy 
who come together for the purposes of more complete, ab- 
stracted solitude. This is the loneliness " to be felt." — The 
Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit 35 
soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quakers' Meet- 
ing. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions, 

- sands, ignoble things, 



Dropt from the ruined sides of kings — 



56 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

but here is something which throws Antiquity herself into the 
fore ground — Silence — eldest of things — language of old 
Night — primitive discourser — to which the insolent decays 
of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as 
5 we may say, unnatural progression. 

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
Looking tranquillity ! 

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod ! 
convocation without intrigue ! parliament without debate ! 

10 what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory ! — 
if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander — yet 
my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when, 
sitting among you in deepest peace, which some outwelling tears 
would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the times 

15 of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox° and 
Dewesbury. — I have witnessed that which brought before my 
eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and seri- 
ous violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent 
to molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, 

20 the outcast and off-scouring of church and presbytery. — I have 
seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your re- 
ceptacle with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, 
from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new 
heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. 

25 And I remembered Penn° before his accusers, and Fox in the 

bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and 

"the Judge and the Jury became as dead men under his feet." 

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recommend 

to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel's History of 

30 the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of the journals 
of Fox, and the primitive Friends. It is far more edifying and 
affecting than anything you will read of Wesley ° and his col- 
leagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, notiiing to make you 
mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly 

35 or ambitious spirit. You will here read the true story of that 
much-injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a byword 
in your mouth) — James Nay lor : what dreadful sufferings, with 



A QUAKERS^ MEETING 67 

what patience, he endured, even to the boring through of his 
tongue with red-hot irons, without a murmur ; and with what 
strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which 
they stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer 
thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the beauti- 5 
fullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker 
still ! — so different from the practice of your common converts 
from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and 
think they can never get far enough from the society of their 
former errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, 10 
with which they had been mingled, not implicated. 

Get the writings of John Woolman° by heart ; and love the 
early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in our days have 
kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they have 15 
substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone de- 
termine. I have seen faces in their assemblies, upon which the 
dove sate visibly brooding. Others, again, 1 have watched, when 
my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which I could 
possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in 20 
all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the 
fierce controversial workings. — If the spiritual pretensions of 
the Quakers have abated, at least they make few pretences. 
Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is 
seldom, indeed, that you shall see one get up amongst them to 25 
hold forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, generally 
ancient, voice is heard — you cannot guess from what part of 
the meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound, 
laying out a few words which " she thought might suit the con- 
dition of some present," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves 30 
no possibility of supposing that anything of female vanity was 
mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness, and a 
restraining modesty. — The men, for what I have observed, 
speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a sample 35 
of the old Foxian orgasm.° It was a man of giant stature, who, 
as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced " from head to 
foot equipt in iron mail." His frame was of iron too. But he 
was malleable. I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I 



68 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

dare not say, of delusion. The strivings of the outer man were 
unutterable — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. 
I saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail — his 
joints all seemed loosening — it was a figure to set off against 
5 Paul Preaching — the words he uttered were few, and sound — 
he was evidently resisting his wdll — keeping down his own 
word-wisdom with more mighty effort than the world's orators 
strain for theirs. *' He had been a wit in his youth," he told 
us, with expressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till 

10 long after the impression had begun to wear away, that I was 
enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking 
incongruity of the confession — understanding the term in its 
worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy of the 
person before me. Plis brow would have scared away the 

15 Levities — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled 
the face of Dis° at Enna. — By wit^ even in his youth, I will be 
sworn he understood something far wdthin the limits of an 
allowable liberty. 

JSIore frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word 

20 having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go 
away with a sermon not made with hands. You have been in 
the milder caverns of Trophonius° ; or as in some den, where 
that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, 
that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. 

25 You have bathed w^ith stillness. — O, when the spirit is sore 
fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings and nonsense- 
noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is to go and 
seat yourself for a quiet half-hour upon some undisputed corner 
of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 

30 Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniformity, 
tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture — " forty feeding 
like one." — 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving 
a soil ; and cleanliness in theui to be something more than the 

35 absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily ; and when 
they come up in bands to their Whitsun° conferences, whiten- 
ing the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the 
United Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones.'^ 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 

My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical. 
Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have sup- 
plied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In 
everything that relates to science^ I am a whole Encyclopsedia 
behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a fig- 5 
ure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's 
days. I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' 
standing. To me a map of old Ortelius° is as authentic as 
Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into 
Asia ; whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divi- 10 
sions ; nor can form the remotest conjecture of the position of 
New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a 
correspondence with a very dear friend in the first-named of 
these two Terra3 Incognitas. I have no astronomy. I do not 
know where to look for the Bear, or Charles's Wain ; the place 15 
of any star; or the name of any of them at sight. I guess at 
Venus only by her brightness — and if the sun on some porten- 
tous morn were to make his first appearance in the West, I verily 
believe, that, while all the world were gasping in apprehension 
about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuri- 20 
osity and want of observation. Of history and chronology I 
possess some vague points, such as one cannot help picking up 
in the course of miscellaneous study ; but I never deliberately 
sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I have most 
dim apprehensions of the four great monarchies; and some- 25 
times the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first in my 
fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, and 
her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great painstaking, 
got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but 
gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely unac-30 
quainted with the modern laniguages ; and, like a better man'^ 
than myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a 
stranger to the shapes and texture of the commonest trees, 
herbs, flowers — not from the circumstance of my being town- 
born — fori should have brought the same inobservant spirit 35 
into the world with me, had I first seen it "• on Devon's leafy 



60 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

shores," — and am no less at a loss among purely town objects, 
tools, engines, mechanic processes. — Not that I affect igno- 
rance — but my head has not many mansions, nor spacious; 
and I have been obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities 
6 as it can hold without aching. I sometimes wonder how I have 
passed my probation with so little discredit in the world, as I 
have done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may 
do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found 
out, in mixed company ; everybody is so much more ready to 

10 produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions. 
But in a tete-a-tete there is no shuffling. The truth will out. 
There is nothing which I dread so much, as the being left alone 
for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man, 
that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this 

15 sort. — 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shackle- 
well, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, 
about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving his parting 
directions (while the steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild 

20 authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, 

his son, nor his servant, but something partaking of all three. 

The youth was dismissed, and we drove on. As we were the 

• sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed his conversation 

to me ; and we discussed the merits of the fare ; the civility 

25 and punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance of an opposi- 
tion coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities of 
its success — to all which I was enabled to return pretty satis- 
factory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette 
by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage 

30 aforesaid — when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling ques- 
tion, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning 
in Smithfield? Now, as I had not seen it, and do not greatly 
care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold 
negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, 

35 at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from 
the sight, and doubtless had hoped to compare notes on the 
subject. However, he assured me that I had lost a fine treat, 
as it far exceeded the show of last year. We were now 
approaching Norton Folgate, when the sight of some shop- 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 61 

goods ticketed freshened him up into a dissertation upon the 
cheapness of cottons this spring. I was now a little in heart, as 
the nature of my morning avocations had brought me into some 
sort of familiarity with the raw material; and I was surprised 
to find how eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India 5 
market — when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the 
earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any calcu- 
lation as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops in 
London. Had he asked of me what song the Sirens sang, or 
what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among 10 
women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a 
" wide solution." ^ My companion saw my embarrassment, and, 
the almshouses beyond Shorfeditch just coming in view, with 
great good nature and dexterity shifted his conversation to the 
subject of public charities ; which led to the comparative merits 15 
of provision for the poor in past and present times, with 
observations on the old monastic institutions, and charitable 
orders ; — but, finding me rather dimly impressed with some 
glimmering notions from old poetic associations, than strongly 
fortified with any speculations reducible to calculation on the 20 
subject, he gave the matter up; and, the country beginning to 
open more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike 
at Kingsland (the destined termination of his journey), he put 
a home thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position he 
could have chosen, by advancing some queries relative to the 25 
North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out something 
about the Panorama of those strange regions (which I had 
actually seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach 
stopping relieved me from any further apprehensions. My 
companion getting out, left me in the comfortable possession 30 
of my ignorance; and I heard him, as he went off, putting 
questions to an outside passenger, who had alighted with him, 
regarding an epidemic disorder that had been rife about Dais ton, 
and which, my friend assured him, had gone through five or 
six schools in that neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon 35 
me, that my companion was a schoolmaster; and that the 
youth, whom he had parted from at our first acquaintance, 

lUrn Burial. 



62 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

must have been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. — He was 
evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much 
desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he put, 
as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear 
5 that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries, for 
their own sake ; but that he was in some way bound to seek for 
knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, for- 
bade me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The adventure 
gave birth to some reflections on the difference between persons 

10 of his profession in past and present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the breed, 
long since extinct, of the Lilys,° and the Linacres°: who be- 
lieving that all learning was contained in the languages which 
they taught, and despising every other acquirement as superfi- 

15 cial and useless, came to their task as to a sport ! Passing from 
infancy to age, they dreamed away all their days as in a 
grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declensions, 
conjugations, syntaxes, and jjrosodies ; renewing constantly the 
occupations which had charmed their studious childhood ; re- 

20 hearsing continually the part of the past ; life must have slipped 
from them at last like one day. They were always in their 
first garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their 
jP/ori- and their Spici-l eg ia° : in Arcadia still, but kings; the 
ferule of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with 

25 that mild sceptre attributed to king Basileus° ; the Greek and 
Latin, their stately Pamela° and their Philoclea°; with the 
occasional duncei-y of some untoward tyro,° serving for a re- 
freshing interlude of a Mopsa,° or a clown Damoetas° ! 

With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's,° or (as it is 

30 sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! " To exhort 
every man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain 
the understanding of the tongues, wherein is contained a great 
treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and 
lost labour; for so much as it is known, that nothing can surely 

35 be ended, whose beginning is either feeble or faulty ; and no 
building be perfect whereas the foundation and groundwork is 
ready to fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the frame." 
How well doth this stately preamble (comparable to those which 
Milton comniendeth as " having been the usage to prefix to some 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 63 

solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon° or Lycurgiis° ") 
correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, 
expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence about gram- 
mar-rules with the severity of faith-articles ! — "as for the di- 
versity of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the 5 
king's majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconvenience, and 
favourably providing the remedie, caused one kind of grammar 
by sundry learned men to be diligently drawn, and so to be set 
out, only everywhere to be taught for the use of learners, and 
for the hurt in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in 10 
that which follows : " w^herein it is profitable that he (the 
pupil) can orderly decline his noun and his verb." His noun ! 

The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least concern of 
a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules. 

The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of every- 15 
thing, because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant 
of anything. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omnis- 
cient. He is to know something of pneumatics; of chemistry; 
of whatever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the 
youthful mind ; an insight into mechanics is desirable, wdth a 20 
touch of statistics; the quality of soils, etc., botany, the consti- 
tution of his country, cum multis aliis.^ You may get a notion 
of some part of his expected duties by consulting the famous 
Tractate on Education^ addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is ex- 25 
pected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he 
may charge in the bill, but at school intervals, as he walks the 
streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural instruc- 
tors), with his pupils. The least part of what is expected from 
him is to be done in school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge 30 
at the mollia tempora fandi° He must seize every oc(5asion — 
the season of the year — the time of the day — a passing cloud 
— a rainbow — a waggon of hay — a regiment of soldiers going 
by — to inculcate something useful. He can receive no pleasure 
from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an ob- 35 
ject of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the pictu- 
resque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking 
of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled 
by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe — 



64 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

that Great Book, as it has been called — is to him indeed, to all 
intents and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read 
tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. — Vacations them- 
selves are none to him, he is only rather worse o:ff than before ; 
5 for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon 
him at such times ; some cadet of a great famil}^ ; some neg- 
lected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after 
him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to 
the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's house, or his 

10 favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow 
attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all 
his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates ; 
but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The 

15 restraint is felt no less on the one side than on the other. — 
Even a child, that " plaything for an hour," tires always. The 
noises of children, playing their own fancies — as I now hearken 
to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while 
I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban 

20 retreat at Shacklewell — by distance made more sweet — inex- 
pressibly take from the labour of my task. It is like writing 
to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at 
least to do so — for in the voice of that tender age there is a 
kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's con- 

25versation. — I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my 
own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of 
very superior capacity to my own — not, if I know myself at 
all, from any considerations of jealousy or self -comparison, for 

30 the occasional communion with such minds has constituted the 
fortune and felicity of my life — but the habit of too constant 
intercourse with spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps 
you down. Too frequent doses of original thinking from others 
restrain what lesser portion of that faculty you may possess of 

35 your own. You get entangled in another man's mind, even as 
you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You are walking 
with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. 
The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce 
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive thoughts 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 65 

from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your 
thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect may be im- 
parted, but not each man's intellectual frame. — 

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upward, 
as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted down- 5 
wards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun 
you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking 
inaudibility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a 
schoolmaster ? — because we are conscious that he is not quite 10 
at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the 
society of his equals. He comes like Grulliver from among his 
little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding 
to yours. He cannot meet you on the square. He wants a 
point given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He is so 15 
used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching you. One of 
these professors, upon my complaining that these little sketches 
of mine were anything but methodical, and that I was unable 
to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the 
method by which young gentlemen in his seminary were taught 20 
to compose English themes. The jests of a schoolmaster are 
coarse, or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is under the 
restraint of a formal and didactive hypocrisy in company, as a 
clergyman is under a moral one. He can no more let his intel- 
lect loose in society than the other can his inclinations. He is 25 
forlorn among his coevals; his juniors cannot be his friends. 

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profes- 
sion, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted 
his school abruptly, " that your nephew was not more attached 
to me. But persons in my situation are more to be pitied than 30 
can well be imagined. We are surrounded by yoimg, and, con- 
sequently, ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope 
to share an atom of their affections. The relation of master 
and scholar forbids this. How pleasing this must be to you, how 
I envy your feelings I my friends will sometimes say to me, when 35 
they see young men whom I have educated, return after some 
years absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, 
while they shake hands with their old master, bringing a pres- 
ent of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in 

F 



66 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

the wannest terms for my care of their education. A holiday 
is begged for the boys ; the house is a scene of happiness ; I, 
only, am sad at heart. — This fine-spirited and warm-hearted 
youth, who fancies he repays his master with gratitude for the 
5 care of his boyish years — 'this young man — in the eight long 
years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, never could 
repay me with one look of genuine feeling. He was proud, 
when I praised ; he was submissive, when I reproved him ; but 
he did never love me — and what he now mistakes for gratitude 

10 and kindness for me, is but the pleasant sensation which all 
persons feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes and 
fears; and the seeing on equal terms the man they were accus- 
tomed to look up to with reverence. My wife too," this inter- 
esting correspondent goes on to say, " my once darling Anna, is 

15 the wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — knowing 
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable 
creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the 
loss of my dear bustling mxother, just then dead, who never sat 
still, was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was 

20 obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save 
her from fatiguing herself to death — I expressed my fears that 
I was bringing her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and 
she, who loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert her- 
self to perform the duties of her new situation. She promised, 

25 and she has kept her word. What wonders will not woman's 
love perform? — My house is managed with a propriety and 
decorum unknown in other schools ; my boys are well fed, look 
healthy, and have every proper accommodation ; and all this 
performed with a careful economy, that never descends to mean- 

30 ness. But I have lost my gentle helpless Anna ! When we sit 
down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I 
am compelled to listen to what have been her useful (and they 
are really useful) employments through the day, and what she 
proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her heart and her features 

35 are changed by the duties of her situation. To the boys, she 
never appears other than the master-' s ivife, and she looks up to 
me as the hoijs' master ; to whom all show of love and affection 
would be highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her 
situation and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint 



VALENTINE'' S DAY 67 

to her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, 
and can I reproach her for it?" — For the communication of 
this letter I am indebted to my cousin Bridget. 



VALENTINE'S DAY 

Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine !° Great 
is thy name in the rubric,° thou venerable Arch-flamen° of 5 
Hymen° ! Immortal Go-between ; who and what manner of 
person art thou? Art thou but a nayne, typifying the restless 
principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in union ? 
or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy 
rochet,° thy apron on, and decent^ lawn sleeves ? Mysterious 10 
personage ! Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other 
niitred° father in the calendar; not Jerome,^ nor Ambrose,^ 
nor CyriP; nor the couvsigner of undipt infants to eternal tor- 
ments, Austin,° whom all mothers hate; nor he who hated all 
mothers, Origen°; nor Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor 15 
Whitgift.° Thou comest attended with thousands and ten 
thousands of little Loves, and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. ° 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and 
instead of the crosier,° the mystical arrow is borne before 20 
thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those charming little 
missives, ycleped° Valentines, cross and intercross each other 
at every street and turning. The weary and all forspent^ two- 
penny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, 25 
not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this 
ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the 
great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is 
so common as the heart, — that little three-cornered exponent 30 
of all our hopes and fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart; 
it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations 



68 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

than an opera hat. What authority we have in history or 
mythology for placing the headquarters and metropolis of god 
Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not 
very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any 
5 other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system 
which might have prevailed for anything which our pathology 
knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in per- 
fect simplicity of feeling, ''Madam, my liver and fortune are 
entirely at your disposal ; " or putting a delicate question, 

10 ''Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow?" But custom has 
settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the 
aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at 
animal and anatomical distance. 

^N^ot many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural 

15 sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It " gives a very 
echo to the throne where Hope is seated." But its issues seldom 
answer to this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the per- 
son we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations 
the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, or 

20 seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven himself was 
hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan,° so the 
knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, confident, and 
befittmg one that bringeth good tidings. It is" less mechanical 
than on other days ; you will say, " That is not the post, I am 

25 sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful 
eternal commonplaces, which, "having been will always be;" 
which no school-boy nor school-man can write away; having 
your irreversible throne in the fancy and affections — what are 
your transports, when the happy maiden, opening with careful 

30 finger, careful not to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon 
the sight of some well-designed allegory, some type, some youth- 
ful fancy, not without verses — 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal,^ 

35 or some such device, not over-abundant in sense — young Love 
disclaims it, — and not quite silly — something between wind 
and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost join the 
shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 



VALENTINE'S DAY 69 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily forget 
thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call you so) 

E. B . E. B. lived opposite a young maiden whom he had 

often seen, unseen, from his parlour window in C e-street. 

She w^as all joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to 5 
enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the 
disappointment of missing one with good humour. E. B. is an 
artist of no common powers ; in the fancy parts of designing, 
perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known at the bottom of 
many a well-executed vignette in the way of his profession, but 10 
no further ; for E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody 
halfway. E. B. meditated how he could repay this young 
maiden for many a favour which she had done him unknown ; 
for when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and 
never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an obliga- 15 
tion : and E. B. did. This good artist set himself at work to 
please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's day three 
years since. He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a w^ondrous 
work. AVe need not say it was on the finest gilt paper with 
borders — full, not of common hearts and heartless allegory, 20 
but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid,° and older poets 
than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There was Pyramus and 
Thisbe,° and be sure Dido° was not forgot, nor Hero and Lean- 
der° and swans more than sang in Cayster,° with mottoes and 
fanciful devices, such as beseemed, — a work, in short, of 25 
magic. Iris dipt the woof.° This on Valentine's eve he com- 
mended to the all -swallowing indiscriminate orifice (O ignoble 
trust !) of the common post ; but the humble medium did its 
duty, and from his watchful stand, the next morning, he saw 
the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious charge 30 
delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valentine, 
dance about, clap her hands, as one after one the pretty em- 
blems unfolded themselves. She danced about, not with light 
love, or foolish expectations, for she had no lover; or, if she 
had, none she knew that could have created those bright images 35 
which delighted her. It was more like some fairy present ; a 
Grodsend, as our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit 
received where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her 
no harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is good to 



70 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and 
his modest way of doing a concealed kindness. 

Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia°; and no 
better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all faithful 
5 lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, but are con- 
tent to rank themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop Valen- 
tine, and his true church. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiseth 

with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in any- 

10 thing. Those national repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold 

with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio 

Medici. 

That the author of the Religio Medici mounted upon the airy 
stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and conjectural 

15 essences ; in whose categories of Being the possible took the 
upper hand of the actual ; should have overlooked the imperti- 
nent individualities of such poor concretions as mankind, is not 
much to be admired.^ It is rather to be wondered at, that in 
the genus of animals he should have condescended to distin- 

20 guish that species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fet- 
tered to the scene of my activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or 
individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indif- 

25 ferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a 
matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes indifferent 
it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle 
of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings — the veriest 
thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, 

30 T hope it may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I 
can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all 
equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sym- 
pathy, will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 71 

worthy maiij who upon another account cannot be my mate or 
fellow. I cannot like all people alike.^ 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They can- 
not like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who 5 
attempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingen- 
uous in their mode of proceeding. We know^ one another at 
first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under 
which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution 

is essentially anti-Caledonian.° The owners of the sort of 10 
faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than com- 
prehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or 
precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing 
them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few 
whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scat- 15 
tered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to them — a 
feature or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs 
and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. 

I I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imper- 
fect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct 
antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite 
to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. 
I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two 
persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and 
instantly fighting. 

• We by proof find there should be 



'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's° 'Hierarchic of Angels," and he 
subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted 
to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack 
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy 
which he had taken to the first sight of the king. 



The cause which to that act compell'd him 

Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



72 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



^ 



They beat up a little game perad venture — and leave it to 
knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The 
light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and 
shifting: waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is 

5 accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out of 
season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They 
cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — but must 
be understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement. They 
seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to mar- 

10 ket in the green ear. They delight to impart their defective 
discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their full develop- 
ment. They are no system atizers, and would but err more by 
attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive 
merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) 

15 is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born 
in panoply.^ You are never admitted to see his ideas in their 
growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put to- 
gether upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his 
mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but 

20 unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He 
brings his total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks it. 
His riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch a 
glittering something in your presence, to share it with you, be- 
fore he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You 

25 cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not find, 
but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing. 
His understanding is always at its meridian — you never see 
the first dawn, the early streaks. — He has no falterings of 
self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, 

30 semi-consciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, em- 
bryo conceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. 
The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox 

— he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. 
Between the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land 

35 with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of 
truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He 
always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him 

— for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His mo- 
rality never abates. He cannot compromise, or understand 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 73 

middle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. His 
conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of 
an oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He 
stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. 
" A healthy book ! " — said one of his countrymen to me, who 5 
had ventured to give that appellation to John Huncle, — " Did 
I catch rightly what you said? I liave heard of a man in 
health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how 
that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, 
you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. 10 
(Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily 
blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I 
have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci,° 
which I was showing off to Mr. * * * *. After he had examined 
it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty 15 
(a foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he very 
gravely assured me, that "he had considerable respect for my 
character and talents" (so he was pleased to say), "but had 
not given himself much thought about the degree of my per- 
sonal pretensions." The misconception staggered me, but did 20 
not seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of this nation are 
particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. 
They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do 
indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it 
were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, 25 
whether the proposition that contains it be new or old, dis- 
puted, or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputation. 
I was present not long since at a party of Noith Britons, where 
a son of Burns*^ was expected ; and happened to drop a silly 
expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were 30 
the father instead of the son — when four of them started up 
at once to inform me, that " that was impossible, because he 
was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they 
could conceive. Swift° has hit off this part of their character, 
namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an 35 
illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.^ 

1 There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no conse- 



74 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

The tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I 
wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In my early life I had 
a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have some- 
times foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen 
5 by expressing it. But I have always found that a true Scot 
resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more than he 
would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your 
"imperfect acquaintance with many of the words which he 
uses; " and the same objection makes it a presumption in you 

10 to suppose that you can admire him. — Thomson^ they seem 
to have forgotten. Smollett° they have neither forgotten nor 
forgiven, for his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon 
their first introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett° 
as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's° His- 

15 tory compared with his Continuation of it. What if the historian 
had continued Humphrey Clinker? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are a 
piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge° 
is in its nonage. ° They date beyond the pyramids. But I 

20 should not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse with 
any of that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to 
enter their synagogues. Old prejudices- cling about me. I 
cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. ° Centuries of 
injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked 

25 revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our 
and their fathers, must and ought to affect the blood of the 
children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or 
that a few fine words, such as candour, liberality, the light of a 
nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so deadly a 

30 disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least 
distasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all 
distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess 

quence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen 
every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots 
than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest 
circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not 
a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent 
and gesture, peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable. — 
Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 75 

that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, 
which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments 
have, to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do 
not like to seethe Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in 
awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, 5 
why do they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a 
form of separation, when the life of it is fled? If they can sit 
with us at table, why do they keck at our cookery ? I do not 
understand these half convertites. Jews christianizing — Chris- 
tians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate 10 
Jew- is a more confounding piece of anomaly than a wet 
Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative, 

B ° would have been more in keeping if he had abided by 

the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, 

which nature meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew 15 

spirit is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot 
conquer the Shibboleth. ° How it breaks out when he sings, 
"The Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea!" The 
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides 
over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. 20 

B has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and 

it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal 
excellence is sense. He sings with understanding, as Kemble^ 
delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and 
give an appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation, 25 
in general, have not over-sensible countenances. How should 
they? — but you seldom see a silly expression among them. — 
Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never 
heard of an idiot being born among them. — Some admire the 
Jewish female-physiognomy. I admire it — but wath trembling. 30 
Jael^ had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the ]N'egro countenance you will often meet with strong 
traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards 
some of these faces — or rather masks — that have looked out 
kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and high- 35 
ways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these "images of 
God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with 
them, to' share my meals and my good nights with them — 
because they are black. 



76 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 
Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day 
when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am 
ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice 

5 of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, 
and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the 
Quakers (as Desdemona° would say) " to live with them." I am 
all over sophisticated — with humours, fancies, craving hourly 
sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, 

10 scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim-whams, which 
their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their 
primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads 
which (according to Evelyn°) Eve dressed for the angel ; my 
gusto too excited 

15 To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return 
to a question put to them may be explained, I think, without 
the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to evasion and 
equivocating than other people. They naturally look to their 

20 words more carefully, and are more cautious of committing them- 
selves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. 
They stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by 
law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting 
to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious 

25 antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the 
laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth — the one 
applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the 
common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon 
the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common 

30 affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is ex- 
pected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn cove- 
nant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to 
hear a person say, ''• You do not expect me to speak as if I were 
upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inad- 

35 vertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; 
and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy- 
truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 77 

required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His sim- 
ple affirmation being received upon the most sacred occasions, 
without any further test, stamps a value upon the words which 
he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks 
to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of him 5 
no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in 
a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim 
to the invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are 
weighed — and how far a consciousness of this particular watch- 
fulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce 10 
indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by honest 
means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified, by a 
more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this 
occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is notori- 
ous in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to this 15 
imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not seem rather an hum- 
ble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, 
which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave 
way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or 
accuser, under trials and racking examinations. " You will 20 
never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till 
midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who 
had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. '' There- 
after as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The as- 
tonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously 25 
displayed in lighter instances. — I was travelling in a stage- 
coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest 
nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, 
where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set be- 
fore us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. 1 30 
in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the 
bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had 
charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was 
very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used 
on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the 35 
good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came 
in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out 
their money and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, 
in humble imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which 



78 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

r had taken. She would not relax m her demand. So they 
all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched 
out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself 
closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than 
5 follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. 
^ We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The 
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously 
pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my con- 
science, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, 

10 beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that 
some justification would be offered by these serious persons for 
the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great surprise 
not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute 
as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, 

15 by inquiring of his next neighbour, " Hast thee heard how 
indigos go at the India House?" and the question operated 
as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEAKS 

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the 
gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem 

20 to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations 
of this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and 
shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when 
once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the 
lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of prob- 

25 ability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion — of that which dis- 
tinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd — could they 
have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any par- 
ticular testimony? — ^^That maidens pined away, wasting in- 
wardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire — that 

30 corn was lodged,° and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in 
diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest — or that spits and 
kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some 
rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring — were all equally 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 79 

probable where no law of agency was understood. That the 
prince of the powers of darkness, passing by. the flower and pomp 
of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of 
indigent eld° — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood a priori to 
us, w^ho have no measure to guess at his policy, or standard to esti- 5 
mate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's market. 
Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolised by a goat, was 
it to be w^ondered at so much, that lie should come sometimes 
in that body, and assert^ his metaphor. — That the intercourse 
w^as opened at all between both worlds w^ as perhaps the mis-io 
take — but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving 
one attested story of this nature more than another on the score 
of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon 
by which a dream may be criticised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in 15 
the days of received witchcraft ; that I could not have slept in a 
village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors 
were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the universal belief that 
these wretches were in league with the author of all evil, hold- 
ing hell tributary to their muttering, no simple justice of the peace 20 
seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly headborough serving, a 
warrant upou them — as if they should subpoena Satan! — 
Prospero° in his boat, with his books and w^and about him, 
suffers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies 
to an unknown island. He might have raised a storm or two, we 25 
think, on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to 
the non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers. ■ — What 
stops the Fiend in Speuser° from tearing Guyon° to pieces — 
or who had made it a condition of his prey that Guyon must 
take assay° of the glorious bait — we have no guess. We do 30 
not know the law^s of that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches 
and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied 
me with good store. But I shall mention the accident which 
directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my 35 
father's book -closet the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, 
occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with which it 
abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solo- 
mon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular ad- 



80 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

measurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot — attracted 
my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of the Witch 
raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We shall 
come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes ; and 
5 there was a^ pleasure in removing folios of that magnitude, 
which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could manage, 
from the situation which they occupied upon an upper shelf. 
I have not met with the work from that time to this, but I 
remember that it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly 

10 set down, with the objection appended to each story, and the 
solution of the objection regularly tacked to that. The objection 
was a summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to 
the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of ancient or 
modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary 

15 excess of candour. The solution was brief, modest, and satis- 
factory. The bane and antidote were both before you. To 
doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be an end for 
ever. The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to 
trample on. But— like as was rather feared than realized 

20 from that slain monster^ in Spenser — from the womb of those 
crushed errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the 
prowess of so tender a Saint George^ as myself to vanquish. 
The habit of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon 
starting more objections, for the glory of findino- a solution of 

25 my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, a 
sceptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had 
read, or heard read in church, lost'^their purity and sincerity of 
impression, and were turned into so many historic or chrono- 
logic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. I 

30 was not to disbelieve them, but — the next thing to that — I 
was to be quite sure that some one or other would or had 
disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the 
letting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is 
the man's weakness, but the child's strength. O, how ugly 

35 sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a 
suckling ! — I should have lost myself in these mazes, and have 
pmed away, I think, with such unfit sustenance as these husks 
afforded, but for a fortunate piece of ill-fortune which about 
this time befell me. Turning over the picture of the ark with 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 81 

too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious 
fabric — driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the 
two larger quadrupeds — the elephant and the camel — that 
stare (as well they might) out of the two last windows next 
the steerage in that unique piece of naval architecture. Stack- 5 
house was henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted 
treasure. With the book,, the objections and solutions gradually 
cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any 
force to trouble me. — But there was one impression which I 
had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut 10 
out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves rather 
more seriously. — That detestable picture ! 

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time 
solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured 
in this nature would justify the expression. I never laid my 15 
head on my pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or 
eighth year of my life — so far as memory serves in things so long 
ago — without an assurance, which realized its own prophecy, 
of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then 
acquitted in part, if I say, that to this picture of the Witch 20 
raising up Samuel — (O that old man covered with a mantle !) 
— I owe — not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy — 
but the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who 
dressed up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow — a 
sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from me. All 25 
day long, while the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking 
over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an 
expression) awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I 
durst not, even in the day-light, once enter the chamber where 
I slept, without my face turned to the window, aversely from 30 
the bed where my witch-ridden pillow was. — Parents do not 
know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to go to 
sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm — the 
hoping for a familiar voice — when they wake screaming — and 
find none to soothe them — what a terrible shaking it is to their 35 
poor nerves ! The keeping them up till midnight, through 
candlelight and the unwholesome hours, as they are called, — 
would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the 
better caution. — That detestable picture, as I have said, gave 



82 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

tjie fashion to my dreams^ if dreams they were — for the scene 
of them was invariably the room in w^hich I lay. Had I never 
met with the picture, the fears would have come self-pictured 
in some shape or other — 

5 Headless bear, black man, or ape — 

but, as it w^as, my imaginations took that form. — It is not 
book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, w^hich create 
these terrors in children. They can at most but give them a 
direction. Dear little T. H.,° w^ho of all children has been 

10 brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint 
of superstition — who w^as never allowed to hear of goblin or ap- 
parition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear of 
any distressing story — finds all this world of fear, from which 
he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra, in his own "thick- 

15 coming fancies ; " and from his little midnight pillow^, this 
nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of 
tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned 
murderer are tranquillity. 

Gorgons,° and Hydras,^ and Chimaeras° — dire stories of 

20 Cel8eno° and the Harpies° — may reproduce themselves in the 
brain of superstition — but they were there before. They are 
transcripts, types — the archetypes'^ are in us, and eternal. 
How else should the recital of that, w^hich we know in a wak- 
ing sense to be false, come to affect us at all? — or 

25 Names, whose sense we see not, 

Fray us with things that be not? 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, con- 
sidered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily 
injury — O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. 
30 They date beyond body — or, without the body, they w^ould 
have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils 
in Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorching de- 
mons — are they one half so fearful to the spirit of a man, as 
the simple idea of a spirit unembodied following him — 

35 Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 83 

And having once turn'd round, walks on 
And turns no more his head ; 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread. i 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual — 5 
that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth 
— that it predominates in the period of sinless infancy — are 
difficulties, the solution of which might afford some probable 
insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least 
into the shadowland of pre-existence. 10 

My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I confess 
an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as in' early youth, keep 
a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the extinguished taper, 
will come and look at me ; but I know them for mockeries, 
even while I cannot elude their presence, and I fight and grapple 15 
with them. For the credit of my imagination, I am almost 
ashamed to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. 
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They are of 
architecture and of buildings — cities abroad, which I have never 
seen, and hardly have hoped to see. I have traversed, for the 20 
seeming length of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lis- 
bon — their churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, sub- 
urbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a map-like 
distinctness of trace, and a daylight vividness of vision, that was 
all but being awake. — I have formerly travelled among the 25 
Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps, — but they are objects 
too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recognition ; and I 
have again and again awoke with ineffectual struggles of the 
inner eye, to make out a shape in any way whatever, of Hel- 
vellyn. Methought I was in that country, but the mountains 30 
were gone. The poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There 
is Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure- 
houses for Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of 
Abara, and caverns. 

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 35 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a fiddle. 
Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids° gambolling 

i Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



84 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons born to 
Neptune — when my stretch of imaginative activity can hardly, 
in the night season, raise up the ghost of a fishwife. To set my 
failures in somew^hat a mortifying light — it was after reading 
5 the noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon 
these marine spectra; and the poor plastic power, such as it 
is, W'ithin me set to work to humour my folly in a sort of 
dream that very night. Me thought I was upon the ocean 
billows at some sea nuptials, riding and mounted high, with 

10 the customary train sounding their conchs before me (I myself, 
you may be sare, the leading god), and joUily we w^ent career- 
ing over the main, till just where Ino Leucothea° should have 
greeted me (I think it w^as Ino) with a white° embrace, the 
billows gradually subsiding, fell from a sea roughness to a sea 

15 calm, and thence to a river motion, and that river (as happens 
in the familiarization of dreams) was no other than the gentle 
Thames, which landed me in the wafture of a placid w^ave or 
two, alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of Lam- 
beth palace. 

20 The degree of the soul's creative ness in sleep might furnish 
no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resi- 
dent in the same soul waking. An old gentleman, a friend of 
mine, and a humorist, used to carry this notion so far, that 
when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious of 

25 becoming a ]3oet, his first question w^ould be, — "Young man, 
what sort of dreams have you?" I have so much faith in my 
old friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein returning 
upon me, I presently subside into my proper element of prose, 
remembering those eluding nereids, and that inauspicious in- 

30 land landino;. 



MY RELATIONS 

I AM arrived at that point of life, at which a man may ac- 
count it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either of 
his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — and some- 
times think feelingly of a passage in "Browne's Christian 
35 Morals," where he speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or 



MY RELATIONS 85 

seventy years in the world. "In such a compass of time," he 
says, " a man may have a close apprehension what it is to be for- 
gotten, when he hath lived to find none who could remember 
his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may sen- 
sibly see with what a face in no long time Oblivion will look 5 
upon himself." 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom single 
blessedness had soured to the world. She often used to say, 
that I was the only thing in it which she loved ; and, when she 
thought I was quitting it, she grieved over me with mother's 10 
tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my reason cannot alto- 
gether approve. She was from morning till night poring over 
good books, and devotional exercises. Her favourite volumes 
were, " Thomas aKempis,"°in Stanhope's translation; and a 
Roman Catholic Prayer Book, with the matins and complines 15 
regularly set down, — terms which I was at that time too young 
to understa!id. She persisted in reading them, although admon- 
ished daily concerning their Papistical tendency; and went to 
church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should do. These 
were the only books she studied ; though, I think at one period 20 
of her life, she told me, she had read with great satisfaction the 
Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman. Finding the 
door of the chapel in Essex -street open one day — it was in 
the infancy of that heresy — she went in, liked the sermon, and 
the manner of worship, and frequented it at intervals for some 25 
time after. She came not for doctrinal points, and never missed 
them. With some little asperities in her constitution, which I 
have above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and 
a fine old Christian. She was a woman of strong sense, and 
a shrewd mind — extraordinary at a repartee; one of the few 30 
occasions of her breaking silence — else she did not much value 
wit. The only secular employment I remember to have seen 
her engaged in, was the splitting of French beans, and dropping 
them into a China basin of fair water. The odour of those 
tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense, redo- 35 
lent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is the most delicate 
of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, T had none — to remem- 
ber. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been born an 



86 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — to know them. 
A sister, I think, that should have been Elizabeth, died in both 
our infancies. What a comfort, or what a care, may I not have 
missed in her ! — But I have cousins, sprinkled about in Hert- 
Sfordshire — besides two, with whom I have been all my life in 
habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins 
par excellence. These are James and Bridget Elia.° They are 
older than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them 
seems disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any 

10 of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May they 
continue still in the same mind; and when they shall be 
seventy five, and seventy three, years old (I cannot spare them 
soonei'), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric precisely 
as a stripling, or younger brother ! 

15 James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities, 
which not every ciitic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we cannot 
explain them. The pen of Yorick,° and of none since his, could 
have drawn J. E. entire — those fiTie Shandean° lights and 
shades, which make up his story. I must limp after in my poor 

20 antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grace and 
talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer at least 
— seemeth made up of contradictory principles. The genuine 
child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence — the 
phlegm of my cousin's doctrine, is invariably at war with his 

25 temperament, which is high sanguine. With always some fire- 
new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of in- 
novation, and crier down of everything that has not stood the 
test of age and experiment. With a hundred fine notions chas- 
ing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least 

30 approach to the romantic in others ; and, determined by his own 
sense in everything, commends you to the guidance of common 
sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the eccentric in all 
which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not 
commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. On my 

35 once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain popu- 
lar dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so — for the world 
would think me mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for 
works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice collec- 
tion), under the pretext of buying only to sell again — that his 



3IY RELATIONS 87 

enthusiasm may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it 
were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domeiiichino*^ 
hang still by his wall ? — is the ball of his sight much more 
dear to himV — or what picture-dealer can talk like him? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their spec- 5 
ulative conclusions to the bent of their individual humours, 
his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition to his con- 
stitution. He is courageous as Charles of Sweden,^ upon in- 
stinct°; chary of his person upon principle, as a travelling 
Quaker. He has been preaching up to me, all my life, the doc- 10 
trine ©f bowing to the great — the necessity of forms, and man- 
ner, to a man's getting on in the world. He himself never aims 
at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit that would 
stand upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary.° It is 
pleasant to hear him discourse of patience — extolling it as the 15 
truest wisdom — and to see him during the last seven minutes 
that his dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her 
haste a more restless piece of workmanship than when she 
moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out a 
more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, upon 20 
his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet and contentedness 
in the state, whatever it be, that we are placed in. He is tri- 
umphant on this theme, when he has you safe in one of those 
short stages that ply for the western road, in a very obstructing 
manner, at the foot of John Murray's street — where you get in 25 
when it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath 
completed her just freight — a trying three quarters of an hour 
to some people. He wonders at your fidgetiness, — " where 
could we be better than we are, thus sitting, thits consulting f " 
— "prefers, for his part, a state of rest to locomotion," — with 30 
an eye all the while upon the coachman, — till at length, wax- 
ing out of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a 
pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so long over 
the time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily, that 
" the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out, if he does 35 
not drive on that instant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a 
sophistry, he is incaimble of attending you in any chain of 
arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic ; and seems 



88 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

to jump at most admirable conclusions by some process not at 
all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath been 
heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists such a 
faculty at all in man as reason ; and wondereth how man came 
5 first to have a conceit of it — enforcing his negation with all 
the might of reasoning he is master of. He has soine specula- 
tive notions against laughter, and will maintain that laughing 
is not natural to Mm — when peradventure the next moment 
his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer.^ He says some of the 

10 best things in the world, and declareth that wit is his aversion. 

It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their 

grounds^ — What a pity to think that these fine ingenuous lads in a 

few years will all he changed into finvolous Members of Parliament ! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age he 

15 discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I 
admire in him. 1 hate people who meet Time halfway. I am 
for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While he 
lives, J. E. will take his swing. — It does me good, as I walk 
towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine May 

20 morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, 
with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, 
that indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude° — or a 
Hobbima° — for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at 
Christie's, and Phillips's — or where not, to pick up pictures, 

25 and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, 
to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me pos- 
sesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business 
which he must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang 
heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes 

30 off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pall Mall — per- 
fectly convinced that he has convinced me — while I proceed 
in my opposite direction tuneless. 

It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor of Indifference 
doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly 

35 housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found 
the best — placing it at this distance, and at that, but always 
suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You nmst spy at it 
through your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective — though 
you assure him that to you the landscape shows much more 



MY RELATIONS 89 

agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight 
who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop 
an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior 
bargains to the present ! — The last is always his best hit — 
his "Cynthia of the minute." — Alas! how many a mild 5 
Madonna have I known to come in — a Raphael^ ! — keep its 
ascendency for a few brief moons — then, after certain inter- 
medial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back 
gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — adopted in turn by each of 
the Carracci,° under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, i(> 
mildly breaking its fall — consigned to the oblivious lumber- 
room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano,^ or plain Carlo Maratti° ! 
— which things when I beheld — musing upon the chances and 
mutabilities of fate below hath made me to reflect upon the 
altered condition of great personages, or that woeful Queen of 15 
Richard the Second — 

-set forth in pomp, 



She came adorned hither like sweet May ; 
Sent back like Hallowmass^ or shortest day. 

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited sympathy 20 
with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own, and 
makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind. He never 
pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old estab- 
lished play -goer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming 
one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian — as a piece of 25 
news 1 He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant green 
lanes which he had found out for me, knowing me to be a great 
walker, in my own immediate vicinity — who have haunted the 
identical spot anytime these twenty years ! — He has not much 
respect for that class of feelings which goes by the name of 30 
sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily 
sufferings exclusively — and rejecteth all others as imaginary. 
He is affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature 
in pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of woman- 
kind. A constitutional acuteness to this class of sufferings 35 
may in part account for this. The animal tribe in particular 
he taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded or 



90 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. An over- 
loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the apostle to the brute 
kind — the never-failing friend of those who have none to care 
for them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, or eels 
5 skinned alive, will wring him so, that " all for pity he could 
die." It wdll take the savour from his palate, and the rest 
from his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense feeling 
of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, 
and unity of purpose, of that " true yoke-fellow with Time," to 

10 have effected as much for the Animal, ?is he hath done for the 
Negro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is but imper- 
fectly formed for purposes which demand co-operation. He 
cannot wait. His amelioration -plans must be ripened in a day. 
For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent 

15 societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human suffer- 
ings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, 
his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, — while they think of 
debating. He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief 
of * * * * because the fervour of his human- 

20 ity toiled beyond the formal apprehension and creeping pro- 
cesses of his associates. I shall always consider this distinction 
as a patent of nobility in the Elia family^ ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, or 
upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good 

25 manners, and the understanding that should be between kins- 
folk, forbid ! — With all the strangenesses of this strangest of the 
Elias — I would not have him in one jot or tittle other than he 
is ; neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman for the 
most exact, regular, and every way consistent kinsman breathing. 

30 In my next. Reader, I may perhaps give you some account 
of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already surfeited with 
cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go 
with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two since, 
in search of more cousins — 

35 Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 



MACKERY E2i^D, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 91 



MACKEKY END, m HERTFORDSHmE 

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long 
year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the 
period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and 
maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable 
comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no 5 
sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the 
rash king's^ offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree 
pretty well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as '^with a 
difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional 
bickerings — as it should be among near relations. Our sym- 10 
pathies are rather understood than expressed ; and once, upon 
my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, 
my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. 
We are both great readers in different directions. While I am 
hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old 15 
Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted 
in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading- 
table is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative 
teases me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She 
must have a story — well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be 20 
life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The 
fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real life — 
have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out- 
of-the-way humours and opinions — heads with some diverting 
twist in them — the oddities of authorship, please me most. 25 
My cousin has a native disrelish of anything that sounds odd 
or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her that is quaint, irregu- 
lar, or out of the road of common sympathy. She " holds Nature 
more clever.'* I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliq- 
uities of the Religio Medici ; but she must apologize to me for 30 
certain disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to 
throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear favourite 
of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice noble, chaste, 
and virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, and original- 
brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle. 35 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could 



92 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, free- 
thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and 
-systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their 
opinions. That which was good and venerable to her, when 
5 a child, retains its authority'' over her mind still. She never 
juggles or plays tricks with her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I 
have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly 
this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns 

10 out, that I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But 
where we have differed upon moral points; upon something 
proper to be done, or let alone ; whatever heat of opposition, 
or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I am sure always, in 
the long-run, to be brought over to her way of thinking. 

15 I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle 
hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She 
hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in 
company : at which times she will answer yes or no to a ques- 
tion, without fully understanding its purport — which is pro- 

20 voking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of 
the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is equal 
to the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desei't her 
upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a 
thing of moment, she can speak to it° greatly ; but in matters 

25 which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been known 
sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and she 
happily missed all that train of female garniture which passeth 
by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by 

30 accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English 
reading,^ without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at 
will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty 
girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I 
know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be 

35 diminished by it, but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the 
worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter ; but in 
.the teasing accidents and minor perplexities, which do not call 
out the Will to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse 



MACKERY JEND, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 93 

by an excess of participation. If she does not always divide 
your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure 
always to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a 
play with, or upon a visit; but best, when she goes a journey 
with you. 5 

AVe made an excursion together a few summers since, iuto 
Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less- 
known relations in that fine corn country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or Mackarel 
End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of 10 
Hertfordshire; a farm-house, — delightfully situated within a 
gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having 
been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under 
the care of Bridget; who, as 1 have said, is older than myself 
by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the 15 
remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in 
equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that 
time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married 
my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My 
grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Glad- 20 
mans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the 
county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty 
years had elapsed since the visit I speak of ; and, for the 
greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other 
two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited 25 
Mackery End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid 
almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at 
Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we arrived at the spot of 
our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm- 30 
house, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, 
affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for 
many a year. For though / had forgotten it, we had never 
forgotten being there together, and we had been talking 
about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part 35 
became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I 
knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how imlike 
it was to that which I had conjured up so many times instead 



94 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season was in the 
" heart of June/' and I could say with the poet,° 

But thou, that didst appear so fair 
To fond imagination, 
5 Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation ! 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss° than mine, for she easily 
remembered her old acquaintance again — some altered features, 
of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready 

10 to disbelieve for joy ; but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in 
her affections — and she traversed every outpost of the old 
mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the 
pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) — 
with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more 

15 pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But 
Bridget in some things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house — and that was 
a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmount- 
able ; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers 

20 and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged 
my cousin in without me ; but she soon returned with a creature 
that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. 
It was the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a 
Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely 

25 brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as 
the handsomest young women in the county. But this 
adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all — more 
comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She 
just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget 

30 once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of 
kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, 
that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a 
metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving- 
Hertfordshire. In fiYQ minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted 

35 as if we had been born and bred up together ; were familiar, 
even to the calling of each other by our Christian names. So 
Christians should call one another. To have seen Bridget and 
her — it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins° ! 



MODERN GALLANTRY 95 

There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and 
stature, answering to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which 
would have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We 
were made welcome by husband and wife equally — we, and 
pur friend that was with us. — I had almost forgotten him — 5 
but B. F.° will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure 
he shall read this on the far distant shores where the Kangaroo 
haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already 
so, as if in anticipation of our coming ; and, after an appropriate 
glass of native wine, never let me forget with what honest pride 10 
this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, 
to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and 
sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us, 
at a time when she almost knew nothing. — AVith what cor- 
responding kindness we were received by them also — how 15 
Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a 
thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and persons, to 
my utter astonishment, and her own — and to the astoundment 
of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was not a 
cousin there, — old effaced images of more than half-forgotten 20 
names and circumstances still crowding back upon her, as words 
written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth, 
— when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget 
me ; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of weak- 
ling infancy I was her tender charge — as I have been her care 25 
in foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral walks, long 
ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 



MODERN GALLANTRY 

In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased to 
compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry ; a certain 
obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed 30 
to pay to females, as females. 

I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, when 
I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the eia from 



96 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave 
off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, 
in common with the coarsest male offc'enders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes 
5 to the fact that in England women are still occasionally — 
hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject to 
be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant^ hands a fishwife across 
10 the kennel ; or assists the apple-woman to pick up her wander- 
ing fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, 
who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this 
refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not 
15 known, or think themselves not observed — when I shall see 
the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired 
box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor 
woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same 
stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain — when I shall no 
20 longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, 
till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her, 
seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress ; till one, that 
seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest, sig- 
nificantly declares " she should be welcome to his seat, if she 
25 were a little younger and handsomer." Place this dapper 
warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female 
acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a politer- 
bred man in Lothbury. 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such prin- 
30 ciple influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the 
drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be 
performed by women. 

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point 
to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant 
35 got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain 
time of life, in which both find their account equally. 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions 
of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions 
paid to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, tq 



MODERN GALLANTRY 97 

coarse complexions as to clear — to the woman, as she is a 
woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortmie, or a title. 

I shall believe it to be something more than a name, w^hen a 
well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to 
the topic of female old age w^ithout exciting, and intending to 5 
excite, a sneer : — when the phrases " antiquated virginity," and 
such a one has '' overstood her market," pronounced in good 
company, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman, 
that shall hear them spoken. 

Joseph Paice,° of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of the Di- 10 
rectors of the South-Sea company — the same to whom Edwards, 
the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet — was 
the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took 
me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon 
me. I owe to his precepts and example w^hatever there is of 15 
the mati of business (and that is not much) in my composition. 
It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a 
Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he w^as the finest 
gentleman of his time. He had not one system of attention to 
females in the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at the 20 
stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he 
never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a 
disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bareheaded 
— smile if you please — to a poor servant-girl, while she has 
been inquiring of him the w^ay to some street — in such a pos-25 
ture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her in the 
acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, 
in the common acceptation of the word, after women : but he 
reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before 
him, womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly 30 
escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a 
shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that 
it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she 
had been a countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld he 
would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar- 35 
woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show our 
gran dams. He was the Preux Chevalier^ of Age ; the Sir 
Calidore,° or Sir Tristan,° to those who have no Calidores or 
Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded 



98 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

thence, still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow 
cheeks. 

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his addresses 
to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Winstanley's daughter 
5 of Clapton — who dying in the early days of their courtship, 
confirmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It 
was during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been 
one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches 

— the common gallantries — to which kind of thing she had 
10 hitherto manifested no repugnance — but in this instance with 

no effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledg- 
ment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. 
He could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always 
shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the 

15 following day, finding her a little better humoured, to expostu- 
late with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with 
her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his atten- 
tions ; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments ; 
that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to 

20 expect all sorts of civil things said to her ; that she hoped she 
could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as 
little injury to her humility as most young women ; but that 

— a little before he had commenced his compliments — she had 
overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating 

25 a young woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite 
to the appointed time, and she thought to herself, " As I am 
Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed beauty, 
and known to be a fortune, — I can have my choice of the fin- 
est speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is 

30 courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one (naming 
the milliner)^ — and had failed of bringing home the cravats to 
the appointed hour — though perhaps I had sat up half the 
night to forward them — what sort of compliments should I 
have received then?— And my woman's pride came to my 

35 assistance ; and I thought, that if it were only to do me honour, a 
female, like myself, might have received handsomer usage; and 
I was determined not to accept any fine speeches to the com- 
promise of that sex, the belonging to which w^as after all my 
strongest claim and title to them." 



MODERN GALLANTRY 99 

I think the lady discovered^ both generosity, and a just way 
of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover; and I 
have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain of cour- 
tesy, which through life regulated the actions and behaviour 
of my friend towards all of womankind indiscriminately, owed 5 
its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his 
lamented mistress. 

I wish the whole female world would entertain the same 
notion of these things that Miss Win Stanley showed. Then 
we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry ; 10 
and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man — a pattern 
of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, 
to a sister — the idolater of his female mistress — the dis- 
parager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortu- 
nate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a 15 
woman derogates from her own sex, in whatever condition placed 
— her handmaid, or dependent — she deserves to have dimin- 
ished from herself on that score ; and probably will feel the 
diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not 
inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. AVhat a 20 
woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is 
first — respect for her as she is a woman ; — and next to that — to 
be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand 
upon her female character as upon a foundation ; and let the 
attentions, incident to individual preference, be so many pretty 25 
additaments and ornaments — as many, and as fanciful, as you 
please — to that main structure. Let her first lesson be — with 
sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life, in the 
Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountains, its river, 30 
I had almost said — for in those young years, what was this 
king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant 
places? — these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this 

tJorc. 



100 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

day, no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emo- 
tion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot. 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
5 Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 

There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, 
Till they decay 'd through pride. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What 
a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time 

10 — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by unex- 
pected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic 
green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion 
of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden ; that 
goodly pile 

15 Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,° 

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fan- 
tastically-shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful 
Crown-office-row (place of my kindly° engendure), right op- 
posite the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her 

20 yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned 
from her Twickenham Naiades^ ! a man would give something 
to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has 
that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I 
have made to rise and fall, how many times ! to the astound- 

25 ment of the young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being 
able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted 
to hail the wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air had 
the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, 
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to 

30 take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, 
holding correspondence with the fountain of light ! How would 
the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of 
childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as 
an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! 

35 Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 101 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowel- 
ments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of com- 
munication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and 
silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden 
god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere van- 5 
ished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate 
inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for 
its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures 
not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It 
was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam 10 
could scarce have missed it in Pai-adise. It was the measure 
appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the 
birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pas- 
ture and be led to fold by. The shepherd "carved it out 
quaintly in the sun ; " and, turning philosopher by the very 15 
occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tomb- 
stones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by 
Marvell," who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial 
out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher 
up, for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty 20 
delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk 
of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden 
scenes : — 

What wondrous life is this I lead ! 

Ripe apples drop about my head. 25 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 30 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 

Withdraws into its happiness. 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find ; 35 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas ; 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot 40 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root. 

Casting the body's vest aside. 



102 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

My soul into the boughs does glide ; 
There, like a bird, it sits and sings. 
Then whets and claps its silver wings, 
And, till prepared for longer flight, 
5 Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew. 
Of flowers, and herbs, this dial new ! 
Where, from above, the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 
XQ And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 
How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ? i 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, 

15 fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up or bricked over. Yet, 
where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the South- 
Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four 
little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, 
spouting out ever fresh streams from their innocent-wanton 

20 lips, in the square of Lincoln's-inn, when I was no bigger than 
they were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. 
The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are 
esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children, by letting 
them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They 

25 are awakening images to them at least. Why must everything 
smack of man, and mannish? Is the w^orld all grown up? Is 
childhood dead ? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wdsest 
and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its 
earliest enchantments? The figures were grotesque. Are the 

30 stiff-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about 
that area, less Gothic in appearance ? or is the splutter of their 
hot rhetoric one-half so refreshing and innocent as the little 
cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered? 

They have lately gothicized the entrance to the Inner Temple- 

35 hall, and the library front ; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the 
body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble. What is 
become of the winged horse that stood over the former? a 
stately arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the Vir- 
tues, which Italianized the end of the Paper-buildings ? — my 

1 From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 103 

first hint of allegory! They must account to me for these 
things, which I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the parade ; 
but the traces are passed away of the footsteps which made its 
pavement awful ! It is become common and profane. The old 5 
benchers had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of 
the day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their 
air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces be- 
twixt you, when you passed them. We walk on even terms 

with tlbeir successors. The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready 10 

to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a re- 
partee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated 
Thomas Coventry? — whose person was a quadrate, his step 
massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait 
peremptory and path -keeping, indivertible from his way as a 15 
moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the browbeater 
of equals and superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever 
he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would 
have shunned an Elisha^ bear. His growl was as thunder in 
their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke ; 20 
his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and 
horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his 
speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He 
took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under 
the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his waist- 25 
coat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, 
and by adj ancts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced 
the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the 
pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had 30 
nothing but that and their benchership in common. In politics 
Salt was a whig, and Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sar- 
castic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry had a rough 
spinous^ humour — at the political confederates of his associate, 
which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like 35 
cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of 
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. I 
suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. AVhen a case 



104 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

of difScalt disposition of money, testamentary or otherwise, 
came before him, he ordinarily handed it over with a few 
instructions to his man Lovel,° who was a quick little fellow, 
and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural under- 
5 standing, of which he had an uncommon share. It was in- 
credible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of 
gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a 
minute — indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet 
men would give him credit for vast application, in spite of 

10 himself. He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. 
He never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his sword — 
they wore swords then — or some other necessary part of his 
equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions, 
and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was anything which 

15 he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to 
dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day 
of her execution; — and L., who had a wary foresight of his 
probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him with 
great anxiety, not in any possible manner to allude to her story 

20 that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. 
He had not been seated in the parlour, where the company was 
expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in 
the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, and 
pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary motion with him — 

25 observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy 
must be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this sort 
were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest 
men of his time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters 
pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and enibar- 

SOrassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He 
never laughed. He had the same good fortune among the 
female world, — was a known toast with the ladies, and one or 
two are said to have died for love of him — I suppose, because 
he never trifled or talked gallantly with them, or paid them, 

35 indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and 
person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have 
shown them off with advantage to the women. His eye lacked 

lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at the advanced 

age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, 



THE OLD BENCHETtS OF THE INNEU TEMPLE 105 

wetting the pavement of B d Row, with tears that fell in 

drops which might be heard, because her friend had died that 
day — he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the 
last forty years — a passion which years could not extinguish or 
abate ; nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings off 5 
of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. 
Mild Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that 
name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, which 
gave him early those parsimonious habits which in after life 10 
never forsook him ; so that, with one windfall or another, about 
the time I knew him he was master of four or five hundred 
thousand pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore 
less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in Ser- 
jeant's-inn. Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed 15 
penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day. C. 
had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent 
above a day or tw^o at a time in the summer ; but preferred, 
during the hot months, standing at his window in this damp, 
close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, "the maids draw- 20 
ing water all day long." I suspect he had his within-door 
reasons for the preference. Hie currus et arma fuere.^ He 
might think his treasures more safe. His house had the aspect 
of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than 
a miser — or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes° breed, who 25 
have brought discredit upon a character which cannot exist 
without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of 
purpose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so 
easily despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often 
enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us 30 
careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable distance 
behind. C.gave away 30,000Z. at once in his lifetime to a blind 
charity. His housekeeping was severely looked after, but he 
kept the table of a gentleman. He would know who came in 
and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was 35 
never suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what he 
was worth in the world ; and having but a competency for his 
rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated to improve, 



106 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

might have suffered severely if he had not had honest people 
about him. Lovel took care of everything. He w^as at once 
his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his '' flapper,"° 
his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing with- 
5 out consulting Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting 
and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost too much 
in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He 
resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever 
have forgotten for a moment that he was a servant. 

10 I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and los- 
ing honesty. A good fellow withal, and " would strike." In the 
cause of the oppressed he never considered inequalities, or calcu- 
lated the number of his opponents. He once wrested a sword 
out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn upon 

15 him, and pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The 
swordsman had offered insult to a female — an occasion upon 
which no odds against him could have prevented the inter- 
ference of Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to the 
same person, modestly to excuse his interference — for L. never 

20 forgot rank, where something better was not concerned. L. 
was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as 
Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a 
portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for 
humorous poetry — next to Swift and Prior° — moulded 

25 heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of 
natural genius merely ; turned cribbage-boards, and such small 
cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls 
with equal facility ; made punch better than any man of his 
degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits; and 

30 was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you 
could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and 
just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton 
would have chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him in his old 
age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last 

35 sad stage of human weakness — ^'a remnant most forlorn of 
what he was," — yet even then his eye would light up upon the 
mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he would 
say, in Bayes — " was upon the stage nearly throughout the 
whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 107 

he would speak of his former life, and how he came up a little 
boy from Lmcolii to go to service, and how his mother cried at 
parting with him, and how he returned, after some few years 
absence, in his smart new livery to see her, and she blest her- 
self at the change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it 5 
was " her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he 
would weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood might 
have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the com- 
mon mother of us all in no long time after received him gently 
into hers. 10 

With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon the ter- 
race, most commonly Peter Pierson would join, to make up a 
third. They did not walk linked arm-in-arm in those days — 
" as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally 
with both hands folded behind them for state, or with one at 15 
least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, 
but not a prepossessing man. He had that in his face which 
you could not term unhappiness; it rather implied an inca- 
pacity of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to 
whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without 20 
his sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know that he 
did good acts, but I could never make out what he loas. Con- 
temporary with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington 
— another oddity — he w^alked burly and square — in imitation, 
I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dignity 25 
of his prototype. T>revertheless, he did pretty well, upon the 
strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother 
a bishop. When the account of his year's treasurership came 
to be audited, the following singular charge was unanimously 
disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the 30 
gai-dener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the sparrows, by 
my orders." Next to him was old Barton — a jolly negation, 
who took upon him the ordering of the bills of fare for the 
parliament chamber, where the benchers dine — answering to 
the combination rooms at college — much to the easement of 35 
his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — 
Then Read, and Twopenny — Read, good-humoured and per- 
sonable — Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous 
in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was 



108 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

attentuated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he 
was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was 
performed by three steps and a jump regularly succeeding. 
The steps were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to 
5 walk ; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. 
Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could 
never discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
to answer the purpose any better than common walking. The 
extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It 

10 was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally him upon 
his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no 
relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard 
that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything 
had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson, he was 

15 called — was of this period. He had the reputation of possess- 
ing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. 
He was the Friar Bacon° of the less literate portion of the 
Temple. I remember a pleasant passage of the cook applying 
to him, with much formality of apology, for instructions how to 

20 write down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He was 
supposed to know, if any man in the world did. He decided 
the orthography to be — as I have given it — fortifying his 
authority with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the 
manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do spell it 

25 yet, perversely, aiYcA bone, from a fanciful resemblance between 
its shape and that of the aspirate so denominated. I had 
almost forgotten Mingay with the iron hand — but he was 
somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some accident, 
and supplied it with a grappling-hook, which he wielded with a 

30 tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute before I was 
old enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I 
remember the astonishment it raised iu me. He was a 
blustering, loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phenome- 
non to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like 

35 the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses.° Baron 
Maseres,° who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of 
the reign of George the Second, closes my imperfect recollections 
of the old benchers of the Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the like of you 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 109 

exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable, haK- 
understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear away the 
preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? 
Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to 
me — to my childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? In 5 
those days I saw Gods, as " old men covered with a mantle," 
walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry 
perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary- 
fabling, — in the heart of childhood there will, for ever, spring 
np a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of 10 
exaggeration wall be busy there, and vital — from every-day 
forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little 
Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders 
about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While child- 
hood, and while ■ dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, 15 
imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly 
the earth. 

P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. 
See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the erring 
notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought that he 20 
had been a bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N.° informs me, 
married young, and losing his lady in childbed, wdthin the first 
year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects 
of which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In what a 
new light does this place his rejection (O call it by a gentler 25 

name !) of mild Susan P , unravelling into beauty certain 

peculiarities of this very shy and retiring character ! — Hence- 
forth let no one receive the narratives of Eli a for true records ! 
They are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not 
verities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts 30 
of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and 
would have done better perhaps to have consulted that gentle- 
man, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. 
But the w^orthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his 
new masters — would but have been puzzled at the indecorous 35 
liberties of Elia. The good man wots° not, peradventure, of 
the licence which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speak- 
ing age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Gentle- 



110 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

man's — his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having 
been long confined to the holy ground of honest Urban' s 
obituary. May it be long before his own name shall help to 
swell those columns of unenvied flattery I — Meantime, O ye 
5 Xew Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for 
he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmi- 
ties overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — 
make allowances for them, remembering that "ye yourselves are 
old." So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and 

10 cognizance, still flourish ! so may future Hookers° and Seldens 
illustrate your church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in 
default of more melodious quiristers, un poisoned ho]3 about 
your walks ! so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, 
who, b}^ leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, 

15 drop her prettiest blushing curtesy as ye pass, reductive of 
juvenescent emotion! so may the younkers° of this generation 
eye you, pacing yonr stately terrace, with the same superstitious 
veneration, with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies'^ 
that solemnized the parade before ye ! 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

20 The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin 
in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, 
when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was 
something more than a common blessing; when a belWul was 
a wind-fall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts 

25 and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp absti- 
nence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be 
ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. 
It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of 
food — the act of eating — should have had a particular expres- 

30 sion of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied 
and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon 
the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things 
of existence. 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 111 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other 
occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a 
form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight 
ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have 
we none for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace before 5 
Milton — a grace before Shakspeare — a devotional exercise 
proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen? — but, the 
received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary 
ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to 
the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so 10 
called ; commending my new scheme for extension to a niche 
in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part 
heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, 
for the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian 
Christians, no matter where assembled. 15 

The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its 
beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unpro vo- 
cative repast of children. It is here that the grace becomes 
exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows 
whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down to 20 
his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be but 
feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of 
wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, 
have entered. The proper end of food — the animal suste- 
nance — is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's 25 
bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. 
Their courses are perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by 
the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves 
the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel 30 
thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with 
turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and in- 
stitution of eating ; when he shall confess a perturbation of 
mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the 
presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a varus 35 
hospes'^) at rich men's tables, with the savoury soup and messes 
steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests 
with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduc- 
tion of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous 



112 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious 
sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises 
from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the 
gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is 
5 pagan, and the belly-god intercepts it for its own. The very 
excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all sense 
of proportion between the end and means. The giver is veiled 
by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of returning 
thanks — for what? — for having too much \vhile so many 

10 starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously 
perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen 
it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense of the 
co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the blessing. 

15 After a devotional tone put on for a few^ seconds, how rapidly 
the speaker wnll fall into his common voice, — helping himself 
or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of 
hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was not 
most conscientious in the discharge of the duty; but he felt in 

20 his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the 
yiands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational 
gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians sit 
down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remembering 

25 the Giver? — no — I w^ould have them sit down as Christians, 
remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or, if their appe- 
tites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with 
delicacies for which east and west are ransacked, I would have 
them postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when appe- 

30 tite is laid ; w^hen the still small voice can be heard, and the 
reason of the grace returns — wdth temperate diet and restricted 
dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for 
thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he 
kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put 

35 into the mouth of Celseno anything but a blessing. We may 
be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food 
beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude : 
but the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes ; 
daily bread, not delicacies ; the means of life, and not the means 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 113 

of pampering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I 
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some 
great Hall-feast, when he knows that his last concluding pious 
word — and that in all probability, the sacred name which he 
preaches — is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to 5 
commence their foul orgies, with as little sense of true thankful- 
ness (which is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well 
if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little 
clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and pol- 
luting the pure altar sacrifice. 10 

The severest satire upon full tables and sarfeits is the banquet 
which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides for a tempta- 
tion in the wilderness : — 

A table richly spread in regal mode, 

With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 15 

And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 

In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 

Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore. 

Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 

Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Af ric coast. 20 



The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go 
down without the recommendatory preface of a benediction. 
They are like to be short graces where the devil plays the host. 
— I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in this place. 
Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a gaudy-day 25 
at Cambridge ? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus.° 
The whole banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accompa- 
niments altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted, holy 
scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend 
conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and plain 30 
hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, 
from his dreams might have been taught better. To the tem- 
perate fantasies^ of the famished Son of God, what sort of 
feasts presented themselves? — He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 35 

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 
I 



114 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

But what meats? — 

Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn ; 
5 Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought; 
He saw the prophet also how he fled 
Into the desert, and how there he slept 
Under a juniper; then how awaked 
He found his supper on the coals prepared, 
10 And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 
And ate the second time after repose. 
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days : 
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook. 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

15 TsTothing in Milton is finelier fancied than tBese temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these tw^o vision- 
ary banquets, think you, would the introduction of what is 
called the grace have been most fitting and pertinent ? 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practically I own 

20 that (before meat especially) they seem to involve something 
awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of one or another 
kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise 
but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continu- 
ing the species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a 

25 distance with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment of appe- 
tite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the 
least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers, w^ho go about 
their business, of every description, with more calmness than 
we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I 

30 have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I 
have observed their applications to the meat and drmk follow- 
ing to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are 
neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a 
horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and 

35 cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor slop them- 
selves. When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot 
imagine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indifferent 
to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 115 

not made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a 
man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. 
I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively 
from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physi- 
ognomical character in the tastes for food. C holds that as 

man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. 
I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of my first 
innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those innoc- 
uous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust 
with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to in- lo 
spire gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under 
culinary disappointments, as to come home at the dinner hour, 
for instance, expecting some savoury mess, and to find one quite 
tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that commonest of 
kitchen failures — puts me beside my tenor. — The author° of 15 
the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal noises over a 
favourite food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded 
by the grace ? or would the pious man have done better to post- 
pone his devotions to a season when the blessing might be con- 
templated with less perturbation? I quarrel with no man's 20 
tastes, nor would set my thin face against those excellent 
things, in their way, jollity and feasting. But as these exer- 
cises, however laudable, have little in them of grace or grace- 
fulness, a man should be sure, before he ventures so to grace 
them, that while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he 25 
is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish — his Dagon° 
— with a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen be- 
fore him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the ban- 
quets of angels and children ; to the roots and severer repasts 
of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly acknow- 30 
ledged, refection of the poor and humble man : but at the 
heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they be- 
come of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occasion, 
methinks, than the noise of those better befitting organs would 
be which children hear tales of, at Hog's Norton. ° We sit too 35 
long at our meals, or are too curious in the study of them, or 
too disordered in our application to them, or engross too great 
a portion of those good things (which should be common) to 
our share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To be thank- 



116 - THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

ful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion, is to add hypoc- 
risy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes 
the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at 
most tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable as 
5 the napkin, who has not seen that never-settled question arise^ 
as to who shall say it ; while the good man of the house and the 
visitor clergyman, or some other guest belike of next authority, 
from years or gravity, shall be bandying about the office be- 
tween them as a matter of compliment, each of them not 

10 unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal duty 
from his own shoulders ? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines of 
different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to 
each other for the first time that evening. Before the first cup 

15 was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to 
the other with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say any- 
thing. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up 
a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did 
not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with 

20 little less importance he made answer, that it was not a custom 
known in his church: in which courteous evasion the other 
acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in compliance with a 
weak brother, the supplementary or tea grace was waived alto- 
gether. With what spirit might not Lucian° have painted two 

25 priests, of Ms religion, playing into each other's hands the com- 
pliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice, — the hungry 
God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nostrils 
hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) 
going away in the end without his supper. 

30 A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence ; 
a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of imperti- 
nence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic conciseness 
with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant schoolfellow) 
C. y, L., when importuned for a grace, used to inquire, first 

35 slyly leering down the table, " Is there no clergyman here ? " — 
significantly adding, '' Thank G — ." Nor do I think our old 
form at school quite pertinent, where we were used to preface 
our bald bread-and-cheese-suppers with a preamble, connecting 
with that humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most 



MY FIRST PLAY 117 

awful and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has 
to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus.° I remember we were put to 
it to reconcile the phrase " good creatures," upon which the 
blessing rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully under- 
standing that expression in a low and animal sense, — till some 5 
one recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden days of 
Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking 
joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till some pious 
benefactor, commiserating the decencies, rather than the pal- 
ates, of the children, commuted our flesh for garments, and 10 
gave us — horresco referens^ — trousers instead of mutton. 



MY FIRST PLAY 

At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of 
some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, 
serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This 
old doorway, if you are young. Reader, you may not know was 15 
the identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrick's° Drury — all 
of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty 
years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I 
passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been 
wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) 20 
was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart 
did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of 
which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation ! I 
seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran 
to announce it. ^ 25 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. 
He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Feather- 
stone-building, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty 
in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated 
in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and 30 
bearing he seemed to copy ; if John (which is quite as likely) 
did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my god- 
father. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It 



118 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his 
first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at 
Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present 
(over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with 
5 his harmonious charge. — From either of these connections it 
may be inferred that my godfather could command an order 
for the then Drury-lane theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, a 
pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy 
autograph, I have heard him say was the sole remuneration 

10 which he had received for many years' nightly illumination of 
the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre — and he was 
content it should be so. The honour of Sheridan's familiarity 
— or supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather than 
money. 

15 r. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandiloquent, yet 
courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was 
Ciceronian. He had tw^o Latin words almost constantly in his 
mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips!), which 
my better knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In strict 

20 pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versa — but 
in those young years they impressed me with more awe than 
they would now do, read aright from Seneca"^ or Yarro^ — in his 
own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or 
Anglicized, into something like verse verse. By an imposing 

25 manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed 
(but that was little) to the highest parochial honours which 
St. Andrew's has to bestow. 

He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his memory, 
both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans'^! — slight 

30 keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me 
more than Arabian paradises !) and, moreover, that by his testa- 
mentary beneficence I came into possession of the only landed 
property w^hich I could ever call my own — situate near the 
road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. 

35 When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted foot 
on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended 
upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger 
paces over my allotment of three quarters of an acre, with its 
commodious mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an Eng- 



MY FIRST PLAY 119 

lish freeholder that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. 
The estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing 
but an agrarian can restore it. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable 
manager who abolished them ! — with one of these we went. 1 5 
remember the waiting at the door — not that which is left — 
but between that and an inner door in shelter — O when shall 
I be such an expectant again ! — with the cry of nonpareils,^ an 
indispensable play-house accompaniment in those days. As 
near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the 10 
theatrical fruiteresses then was, " Chase some oranges, chase 
some numparels, chase a bill of the play ; " — chase pro chuse. 
But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled 
a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed — 
the breathless anticipations I endured ! I had seen something 15 
like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Howe's 
Shakspeare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of that 
plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of that 
evening. — The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women 
of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters reaching 20 
down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not 
what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a homely fancy 
— but I judged it to be sugar-candy — yet to my raised imagina- 
tion, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified 
candy ! — The orchestra lights at length arose, those " fair 25 
Auroras ! " Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once 
again — and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut 
eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang 
the second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six 
years old and the play was Artaxerxes° ! 30 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — the ancient 
part of it — and here was the court of Persia. — It was being 
admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in 
the action going on, for I understood not its import — but I heard 
the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling 35 
was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, 
princesses, passed before me. I knew not players. I was in 
Persepolis for the time ; and the burning idol of their devotion 
almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and 



120 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

believed those significations to be something more than ele- 
mental fires. It was all enchaiitment and a dream. No such 
pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. — Harlequin's 
Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of 
5 the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of 
grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to 
be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys.° 

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the 
Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very 

10 faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a 
pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I apprehend, 
upon Rich, not long since dead — but to my apprehension (too 
sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as 
Lud° — the father of a line of Harlequins — transmitting his 

15 dagger of lath° (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. 
I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a 
ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the apparition of a dead 
rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are 
dead. 

20 My third play followed in quick succession. It was the Way 
of the World. ° I think I must have sat at it as grave as a 
judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady 
Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. Robin- 
son Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, 

25 were as good and authentic as in the story. — The clownery and 
pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my 
head. I believe, I no more laughed at them, than at the same 
age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque 
Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout mean- 

30 ing) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old 
Round Church (my church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from six 
to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven other 
years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again 

35 entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening 
had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same 
feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ 
from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does 
from six. In that interval what had I not lost ! At the first 



DREAM-CHILDREN : A REVERIE 121 

period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated 
nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how — 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. 
The same things were there materially ; but the emblem, the 5 
reference, was gone ! — The green curtain was no longer a veil, 
drawn between two w^orlds, the unfolding of w^hich was to 
bring back past ages, to present a "royal ghost," — but a 
certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the 
audience for a given time from certain of their fellows-men 10 
who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The 
lights — the orchestra lights — came up a clumsy machinery. 
The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the 
prompter's bell — which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, 
a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which min- 15 
istered to its warning. The actors were men and women 
painted. I thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself, 
and the alteration which those many centuries — of six short 
twelvemonths — had wrought in me. — Perhaps it was fortunate 
for me that the play of the evening was but an indifferent 20 
comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expecta- 
tions, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions 
with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first 
appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons° in Isabella. Comparison 
and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the 25 
scene ; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the 
most delightful of recreations. 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when 
they were children ; to stretch their imagination to the concep- 
tion of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never 30 
saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me 



122 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, 
who lived in a great house in N^orfolk (a hundred times bigger 
than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the 
scene — so at least it was generally believed in that part of the 
5 country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately become 
familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. 
Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel 
uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney- 
piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Red- 

10 breasts; till a foolish rich. person pulled it down to set up a 
marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon 
it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too ten- 
der to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how reli- 
gious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how 

15 beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed 
the mistress of this great house, bat had only the charge of it 
(and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress 
of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living 
in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had pur- 

20 chased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived 
in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the 
dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which after- 
wards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its 
old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other 

25 house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if 
some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately 
at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt draw- 
ing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, ''that would 
be foolish indeed." And then I told how", when she came to 

30 die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, 
2,nd some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many 
miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she 
had been such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed that 
she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the 

')5 Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then 
I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grand- 
mother Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed 
the best dancer — here Alice's little right foot played an in- 
voluntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted 



DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERIE 123 

— tlie best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel dis- 
ease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain ; but 
it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but 
they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. 
Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone 5 
chamber of the great lone house ; and how she believed that an 
apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding 
up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she 
said "those innocents would do her no harm;" and how 
frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid 10 
to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious 
as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded 
all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how 
good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great 
house° in the holy -days, where I in particular used to spend 15 
many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the 
Twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Home, till the old 
marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into 
marble with them ; how I never could be tired with roaming 
about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their 20 
worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, 
with the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious 
old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when 
now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me — and 
how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without 25 
my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden 
fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more pleasure 
in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, 
or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, 
which were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying about 30 
upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me 

— or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself 
ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in that grate- 
ful warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in 
the fishpond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there 35 
a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent 
state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — I had 
more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet 
flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common 



124 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate 
a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had 
meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to 
relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in some- 
5 what a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great- 
grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an 
especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John 

L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and 

a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in soli- 

10 tary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettle- 
some horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than 
themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a 
morning, and join the hunters when there were any out — and 
yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too 

15 much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries — and 
how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was 
handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great- 
grandmother Field most especially ; and how he used to carry 
me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a 

20 good bit older than me — many a mile when I could not walk 
for pain ; — and how in after life he became lame-footed too, 
and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him 
when he was impatient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently 
how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed ; 

25 and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, 
it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance 
there is betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his death as I 
thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and 
haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as 

30 some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet 
I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I 
had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his cross- 
ness, and wished him to be alive again, to be. quarrelling with 
him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him 

35 again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, 
must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the 
children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourning which 
they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and 
prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 125 

stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for 
seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet 
persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W — n °; and, as much 
as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, 
and difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly 5 
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her 
eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in 
doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that 
bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children 
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, lo 
till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the 
uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed 
upon me the effects of speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, 
nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum 
father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, and dreams. We 15 
are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious 
shores of Lethe° millions of ages before we have existence, and 

a name " and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly 

seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with 
the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. 20 
(or James Elia) was gone for evei*. 



DISTANT COKRESPONDENTS 

IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES 

My DEAR F.^ — When I think how welcome the sight of a 
letter from the world whers you were born must be to you in 
that strange one to which you have been transplanted, I feel 
some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, 25 
it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. 
The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagina- 
tion. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should 
ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect 
that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for 30 
posterity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscrip- 



126 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

tions, " Alcander to Strephon in the shades." Cowley's Post- 
Angel is no more than would be expedient in such an intercourse. 
One drops a packet at Lombard-street, and in twenty-four hours 
a friend in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It 
5 is only like whispering through a long trumpet. But suppose a 
tube let down from the moon, wdth yourself at one end and the 
man at the other ; it would be some balk to the spirit of con- 
versation, if you knew that the dialogue exchanged with that 
interesting theosophist would take tw^o or three revolutions of 

10 a higher luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, you 
may be some parasangs nigher that primitive idea — Plato's 
man — than we in England here have the honour to reckon 
ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics ; news, 

15 sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious 
subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after 
my fashion, non-seriously. — And first, for news. In them the 
most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be 
true. But what security can I have that what I now send you 

20 for truth shall not, before you get it, unaccountably turn into a 
lie? For instance, our mutual friend P. is at this present 
writing — my Now — in good health, and enjoys a fair share of 
worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is natural 
and friendly. But at this present reading — yom^ Noiv — he 

25 may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in 
reason ought to abate something of your transport (i.e., at hear- 
ing he was w^ell, etc.), or at least considerably to modify it. I 
am going to the play this evening, to have a laugh with 
Munden.° You have no theatre, I think you told me, in your 

30 land of d d realities. You naturally lick your lips, and 

envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you will cor- 
rect the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday morning with you, 
and 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two 
presents, is in a degree common to all postage. But if I sent 

35 you word to Bath or the Devizes, that I was expecting the 
aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment you received 
the intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there 
would be for a day or two after, as you would well know, a 
smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would give 



DISTANT COREESPONDENTS 127 

rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at least of 
the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my intention to 
produce. But ten months hence, your envy or your sympathy 
would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. iNTot 
only does truth, in these long intervals, unessence herself, but 5 
(what is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear 
that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a wild 

improbable banter I put upon you some three years since, 

of Will Weatherall having married a servant-maid ! I remem- 
ber gravely consulting you how we were to receive her — for 10 
Will's wife was in no case to be rejected ; and your no less 
serious replication in the matter ; how tenderly you advised an 
abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, with 
a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet 
matters more within the sphere of her intelligence ; your de- 15 
liberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how 
far jacks, and spits, and mops, could, with propriety, be intro- 
duced as subjects; whether the conscious avoiding of all such 
matters in discourse would not have a w orse look than the 
taking of them casually in our w^ay ; in what manner we should 20 
carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall 
being by; whether we should s ho w^ more delicacy, and a truer 
sense of respect for Will's wife, by treating Becky wdth our 
customary chiding before her, or by an unusual deferential 
civility paid to Becky as to a person of great worth, but thrown 25 
by the caprice of fate into a humble station. There were 
difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me the 
favour to state with the precision of a lawyer, united to the 
tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn 
pleadings, when lo ! while I was valuing myself upon this flam°30 
put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous 
possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working after my copy, 
has actually instigated our friend (not three days since) to the 
commission of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for 
your diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's 35 
maid. But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear 
F., that news from me must become history to you ; which I 
neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for reading. No 
person, under a diviner, can, with any prospect of veracity, 



128 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

conduct a correspondence at such an arm's length. Two 
prophets, indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with 
effect ; the epoch of the w^-iter (Habakkuk) falling in with the 
true present time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no 
5 prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better wdth that. This 
kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot ; or sent oif 
in water-plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm 
as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all 

10 cold meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. 
It seems that travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to 
some pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, or something, 
hung so fantastically and invitingly over a stream — was it ? 
— or a rock ? — no matter — but the stillness and the repose, 

15 after a weary journey, 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his 
Lordship's hot, restless life, so took his fancy that he could 
imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his 
bones in. This was all very natural and excusable as a senti- 
ment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But 

20 when from a passing sentiment it came to be an act ; and 
when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were 
actually carried all that way from England ; who was there, 
some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the 
question. Why could not his Lordship have found a spot as 

25 solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent, with 
a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or 
in Devon? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, 
entered at the Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with 
the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and 

30 handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians — a thing 
of its delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it till it became 
as vapid as a damaged lustring.^ Suppose it in material 
danger (mariners have some superstition about sentiments) of 
being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark 

35 (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to 
the deviser's purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy con- 
summation. Trace it then to its lucky landing — at L^'-ons 
shall we say? — I have not the maj) before me — jostled upon 
four mien's shoulders — baiting at this town — stopping to 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 129 

refresh at t'other village — waithig a passport here, a license 
there ; the sanction of the magistracy in this district, the con- 
currence of the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it 
arrives at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk 
sentiment into a feature of silly pride or tawdry senseless 5 
affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid w^e 
can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite seaw^orthy. 

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which though contempt- 
ible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate 
a right friendly epistle — your puns and small jests are, I appre- 10 
hend, extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They 
are so far from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond 
sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by hand from this 
room to the next. Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. 
Their nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual 15 
atmosphere of the bystanders : or this last is the fine slime of 
Nilus — the melior lutus° — whose maternal recipiency is as 
necessary as the sol pater° to their equivocal generation. A 
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with it; 
you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavour than you can 20 
send a kiss. — Have you not tried in some instances to palm oft 
a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered? Not 
but it was new to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new 
from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a vil- 
lage ale house a two-days-old new^spaper. You have not seen it 25 
before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort 
of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and 
its recognitory laugh, must be co -instantaneous. The one is 
the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's 
interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a 30 
friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his sweet 
visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not 
to speak of twelvemonths, my dear F.) in giving back its copy? 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. When I try 
to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes 35 
you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see Diogenes° pry- 
ing among you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must 
you be willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest 
man ! You must almost have forgotten how loe look. And tell me 

K 



130 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

what your Sydneyites do ? are they th**v*ng all day long ? Mer- 
ciful Heaven ! what property can stand against such a depreda- 
tion ! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their 
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short 
5 fore puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pick- 
pocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely 
provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they 
would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco- 
motor in the colony. We hear the most improbable tales at 

10 this distance. Pray, is it true that the young Spartans among 
you are born with six fingers, which spoils their scanning? — 
It must look very odd ; but use reconciles. For their scansion, 
it is less to be regretted ; for if they take it into their heads to 
be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of them, 

15 vile plagiarists. — Is there much difference to see, too, between 
the son of a th**f and the grandson ? or where does the taint 
stop? Do you bleach in three or in four generations? I have 
many questions to put, but ten Delphic° voyages can be made 
in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do 

20 you grow your own hemp? — What is your staple trade, — ex- 
clusive of the national profession, I mean? Your locksmiths, I 
take it, are some of 3'Our great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we 
used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous win- 

25 dows, in pump-famed Hare Court in the Temple.° Why did 
you ever leave that quiet corner ? — Why did I ? — with its com- 
plement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the 
theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds! My 
heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty 

30 August, when I revert to the space that is between us ; a length 
of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English 
letters before they can reach you. But while I talk I think you 
hear me, — thoughts dallying with vain surmise — 

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
35 Hold far away.° 

Come back, before T am grown into a very old man, so as you 
shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 131 

Girls whom you left children have become sage matrons while 
you are tarrying there. The blooming Miss W — r (you remem- 
ber Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, an aged croue. Folks 
whom you knew die off every year. Formerly, I thought that 
death was wearing out, — I stood ramparted about v/ith so many 5 
healthy friends. The departure of J. VV., two springs back, 
corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been 
busy. If you do not make haste to return, there will be little 
left to greet you, of me, or mine. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMN^EY-S WEEPERS 

I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown 10 
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive — 
but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nig- 
ritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek 
— such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with 
their little professional notes sounding like the peep-peep° of a 15 
young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce 
them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sun- 
rise ? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — poor 
blots — innocent blacknesses — 20 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth — these 
almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption ; 
and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nip- 
ping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to 
mankind. 25 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness 
their operation! to see a chit no bigger than one's self enter, 
one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces 
Averni° — to pursue him in imagination, as he went sound- 
ing on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! 30 
to shudder with the idea that " now, surely he must be lost for 
ever!" — to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered 
daylight — and then (O fulness of delight!) running out of 
doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge 



132 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some 
flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to remember hav- 
ing been told, that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with 
his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was an 
5 awful spectacle, certainly ; not much unlike the old stage direc- 
tion in Macbeth, where the " Apparition of a child crowned, with 
a tree in his hand, rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early 
rambles, it is good to give him a penny, — it is better to give 

10 him two-pence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper 
troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed° heels (no 
unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy 
humanity will surely rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have 

15 understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassafras. This wood 
boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of 
milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the 
China luxury. I know not how thy palate may relish it ; for 
myself, with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who 

20 hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers 
in London) for the vending of this " wholesome and pleasant 
beverage," on the south side of Fleet-street, as thou approachest 
Bridge-street — the only Salopian house, — I have never yet 
adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin of his com- 

25 mended ingredients — a cautious premonition to the olfactories 
constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, 
with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, 
otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical elegancies, sup it np 
with avidity. 

30 I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it 
happens, but I have always found that this composition is sur- 
prisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper 
— whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) 
do attenuate and soften the fuliginous^ concretions, which are 

35 sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the 
mouth in these unfledged practitioners ; or whether Nature, 
sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the 
lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her 
sassafras for a sweet lenitive — but so it is, that no possible 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 133 

taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can 
convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. 
Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the 
ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no 
less pleased than those domestic animals — cats — when they 5 
purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something 
more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Kead boasteth, not without reason, that his is 
the only Salopian house; yet be it known to thee, Reader — if 
thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art 10 
haply ignorant of the fact — he hath a race of industrious 
imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the 
same savoury mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of 
the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home 
from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving 15 
his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, not 
unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for 
the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, 
between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, 
the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satisf ac- 20 
tory odours. The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight 
vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as 
he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the 
fragrant breakfast. 

This is Saloop^ — the precocious herb-woman's darling — the 25 
delight of the early gardener, who transports his smoking 
cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to Coven t 
Garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and oh ! I fear, too often - 
the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldst thou haply 
encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, 30 
regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but three- 
halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added 
halfpenny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased of the overcharged 
secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter 
volume to the welkin° — so ma}^ the descending soot never taint 35 
thy costly well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick- 
reaching from street to street, of the fired chimney, invite the 
rattling engines fiom ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a 
casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 



134 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ; the 
jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph they 
display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentle- 
man. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with 
5 something more than forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, 
pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when 
1 walk w^estward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back 
in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough — 
yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had hap- 

lOpened — when the roguish grin of one of these young wits 
encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out wdth his 
dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his 
mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the 
fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out the corners of his 

15 poor red eyes, red from many a previous w^eeping, and soot- 
inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched 

out of desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him 

already (how could he miss him ?) in the March to Finchley, 
grinning at the pieman — there he stood, as he stands in the 

20 picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever — with 
such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his 
mirth — ^for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no 
malice in it — that I could have been content, if the honour of 
a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and 

25 his mockery till midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are 
called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies 
must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding such jew^els; 
but, methinks, they should take leave to " air " them as frugally 

30 as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me 
their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess, that from the 
mouth of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those 
white and shiny ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable 
anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, 

35 as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a badge 
of better days ; a hint of nobility : — and, doubtless, under the 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 135 

obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn disguise- * 
ment, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, 
derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The pre- 
mature apprenticements of these tender victims give but too 
much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile 5 
abductions ; the seeds of civility and true courtesy, so often 
discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted 
for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble R,achels° 
mourning for their children, even in our days, countenance the 
fact ; the tales of fairy -spiriting may shadov^ a lamentable 10 
verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu° be but a solitary 
instance of good fortune out of many irreparable and hopeless 
defiliations. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since 
— under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards is an 15 
object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the 
late duke was especially a connoisseur) — encircled with cur- 
tains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets inwoven — 
folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap 
where Venus lulled Ascanius° — was discovered by chance, after 20 
all methods of search had failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost 
chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow con- 
founded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly chim- 
neys, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this 
magnificent chamber ; and, tired with his tedious explorations, 25 
was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, which 
he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping between the sheets very 
quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a 
young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. — But 30 
I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of what I had 
just hinted at in this story. A high instinct was at woi'k in 
the case, or lam mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of 
that description, with whatever weariness he might be visited, 
would have ventured, under such a penalty as he would be taught 35 
to expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately 
to lay himself down between them, when the rug, or the carpet, 
presented an obvious couch, still far above his pretensions — is 
this probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which 



136 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

' I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting 
to the adventure ? Doubtless this young nobleman (for such 
my mind misgives me that he must be) was allured by some 
memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition 
5 in infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his 
nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into which he was 
now but creeping back as into his proper incunabula^ and rest- 
ing-place. — By no other theory than by this sentiment of a 
pre-existent state (as I may call it), can I explain a deed so 

10 venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system, so indecorous, 
in this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a 
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that 
in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor 

15 changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-sw^eepers, 
at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It 
was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the yearly return 
of the fair of St. Bartholomew.° Cards w^ere issued a week 
before to the master-sweeps in and about the metropolis, confin- 

20ing the invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an 
elderly stripling would get in among us, and be good-naturedly 
wdnked at ; but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate 
wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded 
himself into our party, but by tokens was providentially dis- 

25 covered in time to be no chimney-sweeper, (all is not soot which 
looks so,) was quoited° out of the presence with universal 
indignation, as not having on the wedding garment^; but in 
general the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen 
w^as a convenient spot among the pens, at the north side 

30 of the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agree- 
able hubbub of that vanity ; but remote enough not to be 
obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. 
The guests assembled about seven. In those little temporary 
parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as 

35 substantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with 
her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues 
dilated at the savour. James White, as head waiter, had 
charge of the first table ; and myself, with our trusty compan- 
ion Bigod, ordinai'ily ministered to the other two. There was 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 137 

clambering and jostling, you maybe sure, who should get at the 
first table, — for Rochester in his maddest days could not have 
done the humours of the scene with more spirit than my friend. 
After some general expression of thanks for the honour the 
company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasps 
tlie greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), 
that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing "the 
gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, 
whereat the universal host would set up a shout that toi-e the 
concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night 1 
with their brightness. it was a pleasure to see the sable 
younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous 
sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny mouths, 
reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — how he would 
intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, 15 
declaring it " must to the pan again to be browned, for it was 
not fit for a gentleman's eating" — how he would recommend 
this slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a 
tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking 
their teeth, which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly 20 
he would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, naming the 
brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he should lose their 
custom ; with a special recommendation to wipe the lip before 
drinking. Then we had our toasts — "the King," — "the 
Cloth," — which, whether they understood or not, was equally 25 
diverting and flattering ; — and for a crowning sentiment, which 
never failed, " May the Brush supersede the Laurel ! " All 
these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than com- 
prehended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon tables, 
and prefacing every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give me the 30 
leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious comfort to 
those young orphans; every now and then stuffing into his 
mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish on these occasions) 
indiscriminate pieces of those reeking sausages, which pleased 
them mightily, and was the savouriest part, you may believe, of 35 
the entertainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust° — 



138 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers have 
long ceased. He carried away^ with him half the fan of the 
world when he died — of my world at least. His old clients 
look for him among the pens ; and, missing him, reproach the 
5 altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield 
departed for ever. 



A complai:n"t of the decay of beggars, 

IX THE METROPOLIS 

The all-sweeping besom ° of societarian reformation — your 
only modern Alcides' club ° to rid the time of its abuses — is 
uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering 

10 tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, 
wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole mendicant 
fraternity, with all their baggage, are fast posting out of the 
purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded cross- 
ing, from the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the part- 

15 ing Genius of Beggary is " wdth sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this im- 
pertinent crusado, or helium ad exterminationem^^ proclaimed 
against a species. Much good might be sucked from these 
Beggars. 

20 They were the oldest and the honourablest form of pauper- 
ism. Their appeals were to our common nature ; less revolting 
to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to the particular 
humours or caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow- 
creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates 

25 uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their 
desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being 
a man, than to go in livery. 

The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; and when 

30 Dionysius ° from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel anything 
towards him but contempt? Could Vandyke have made a 
picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 139 

have affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the same 
compassionate admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius° 
begging for an obolusf Would the moral have been more 
graceful, more pathetic? 

The Blind Beggar in the legend ° — the father of pretty Bessy 5 
— whose story doggerel rhymes and ale-house signs cannot so 
degrade or attenuate but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit 
will shine through the disguisements — this noble Earl of Corn- 
wall (as indeed he was) and memorable sport of fortune, flee- 
ing from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, and 10 
seated on the flow^ering green of Bethnal, with his more fresh 
and springing daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his 
beogary — would the child and parent have cut a better figure 
doing the honours of a counter, or expiating their fallen condi- 
tion upon the three-foot eminence of some sempstering shop- 15 
board ? 

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to 
your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret 
Newcastle would call them), when they would most sharply 
and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never stop till they 20 
have brought down their hero in good earnest to rags and the 
w^allet. The depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls 
from. There is no medium which can be presented to the 
imagination without offence. There is no breaking the fall. 
Lear,° thrown from his palace, must divest him of his gar- 25 
ments, till he answer " mere nature ; " and Cresseid,° fallen 
from a prince's love, must extend her pale arms, pale with other 
whiteness than of beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell and 
clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with a converse 30 
policy, when they would express scorn of greatness without the 
pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, 
or a Semiramis ° getting up foul linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had de- 
clined his affections upon the daughter of a baker ! yet do we 35 
feel the imagination at all violated when we read the "true 
ballad,'' where King Cophetua woos the beggar maid? 

Pauperism, pauper, pooi* man, are expressions of pity, but 
pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns a 



140 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree of it 
is mocked by its "neighbour grice." Its poor rents and com- 
ings-in are soon summed up and told. Its pretences to 
property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save 

5 excite a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh his 
trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches poor man 
in the streets with impolitic mention of his condition, his own 
being a shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. 
No rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing 

10 purses with him. He is not in the scale of comparison. He is 
not under the measure of property. He confessedly hath none, 
any more than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with 
ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or 
upbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him for 

15 the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy neighbour 
seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. 
No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent 
gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the 
great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of 

2v0 the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar. 

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's 

robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his 

full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in 

public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly 

25 behind it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He 
weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath under- 
gone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the 
universe who is not obliged to study appearances. The ups 
and downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone 

ao continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land affecteth 
him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial 
prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. 
He is not expected to become bail or surety for any one. No 
man troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. 

35 He is the only free man in the universe. 

The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, 
her lions. I can no more spare them than I could the Cries of 
London. No corner of a street is complete without them. 
They are as indispensable as the Ballad Singer; and in their 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 141 

picturesque attire as ornamental as the signs of old London. 
They were the standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial- 
mottoes, the spital sermons,° the books for children, the 
salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of 
greasy citizenry — 5 

-Look 



Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. ° 

Above all, those old blind Tobits° that used to line the wall 
of Lincoln's-inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had 
expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of 10 
pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog Guide 
at their feet, — whither are they fled ? or into what corners, 
blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the whole- 
some air and sun-warmth ? immersed between four walls, in 
what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty of 15 
double darkness, where the chink of the dropt halfpenny no 
more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of 
the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger? Where 
hang their useless staves V and who will farm their dogs ? — 
Have the overseers of St. L — caused them to be shot? or were 20 
they tied up in sacks and dropt into the Thames, at the sugges- . 

tion of B — the mild rector of ? 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most 
classical, and, at the same time, most English of the 
Latinists! — who has treated of this human and quadrupedal 25 
alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest of his 
poems, the Epitaphium in Canem^ or. Dog's Epitaph. Reader, 
peruse it ; and say, if customary sights, which could call up 
such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or 
good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily 30 
thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. 

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 

Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectse, 

Dux cseco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 

Prsetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum 35 

Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, 

Quae dubios regerent passes, vestigia tuta 



142 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prajtereuntium 
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
5 Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 

Quels corda et mentem Indiderat natura benignam. 
Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 
Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad lierilia jussa 
Auresque atque animum arrectus, sen frustula amice 

Xo Porrexit sociasque dapes, sen longa diei 

Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta 
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite eseeum 

15 Orbavit dominum ; prisei sed gratia faeti 

Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos, 
Exiguum hune Irus tumulum de cespite feeit, 
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae ; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque eanemque, 

20 Quod memoret, fiduraque canem dominumque benignumc 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 
That wont to tend my old blind master's steps. 
His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted, 
Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

25 He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings ; but Avould plant, 
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 
A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

;0 Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd : 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 
Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 

O.J I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; 

Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 
Prick'd up at his least motion ; to receive 
At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 
And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 

^0 Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent 

With our long day and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life. 
Till age and slow disease me overtook. 
And sever'd from my sightless master's side. 

45 But lest the grace of so good deeds should die. 

Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 143 

This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 

Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 

And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 

In long and lasting union to attest, 

The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 5 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past 
a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used 
to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, 
wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of 
wood ; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He 10 
was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and 
his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natu- 
ral curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the 
simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought 
down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his 15 
own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, 
of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; 
for the accident which brought him low, took place during the 
riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed 
earth-born, an Ant8eus,° and to suck in fresh vigour from the 20 
soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment ; as 
good as an Elgin° marble. The nature, which should have re- 
cruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired 
into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a 
tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earth- 25 
quake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake° revil- 
ing a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He 
seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending 
quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a Centaur,° 
from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapi- 30 
than° controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made 
shift with yet half of the body-portion which was left him. 
The o.<f sublime^ was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly 
countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he 
driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled 3^ 
in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he 
is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the re- 
straints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one 
of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. 



144 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, 
which called for legal interference to remove ? or not rather a 
salutary and a touching object to the passers-by in a great city? 
Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping 

5 curio.sity (and what else but an accumulation of sights — end- 
less sights — is a great city ; or for what else is it desirable ?) 
was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturce, indeed, but) 
Accidentiurrf' ? What if in forty-and-two-years going about, the 
man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child 

10 (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds — whom had he injured? 
— whom had he imposed upon ? The contributors had enjoyed 
their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all 
day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling 
his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion 

15 — he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club 
of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as 
the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman 
deposing before a House of Commons' Committee — was tliis^ 
or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) de- 

20 served a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, 
at least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has 
been slandered with — a reason that he should be deprived of 
his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying, way of life, and be com- 
mitted in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ? — 

25 There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed 
to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in 
his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable sym- 
bol. " Age, thou hast lost thy breed." — 

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by 

30 begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was 
much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the 
usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was 
surprised with the announcement of a five-lmndred-pound legacy 
left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems 

35 that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some vil- 
lage thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his 
practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly 
into the hat of some blind Bartimeus,^ that sate begging alms 
by the wayside in the Borough. The good old beggar recog- 



A DISSERTATION UPON BOAST PIG 145 

nised his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, when he died, 
left all the amassiiigs of his alms (that had been half a century 
perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was 
this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against 
giving an alms to the blind? — or not rather a beautiful moral 5 
of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude 
upon the other ? 

I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, 
blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun — 10 

Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him ? 

Perhaps I had no small change. 

Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words imposition, 
imposture — give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the 
waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) enter- 15 
tained angels. 

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. 
Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly 
and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire 
whether the *' seven small children,'' in whose name he im-20 
plores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not 
into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It 
is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give^ 
and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleas- 
est) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. AVhen they 25 
come with their counterfeit looks and mumping tones, think 
them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign 
these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst 
not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. 30 
was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first 
seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it 
from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this 



146 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great 
Confucins° in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, 
where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho- 
fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on 
5 to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I 
take to be the elder brother) .was accidentally discovered in 
the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone 
out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect 
mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son 

10 Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with 
fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks 
escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread 
the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it 
was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry 

15 antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what 
was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed 
pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have 
been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest 
periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consterna- 

20tion, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tene- 
ment, which his father and he could easily build up again with 
a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any 
time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what 
he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the 

25 smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour 
assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before 
experienced. What could it proceed from? — not from the 
burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell before — indeed this 
was by no means the first accident of the kind which had 

30 occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire- 
brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, 
weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time 
overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He 
next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of 

35 life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied 
them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs 
of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for 
the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before 
him no man had known it) he tasted — cracklincj ! Again he 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 147 

felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, 
still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig 
that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and surren- 
dering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up 5 
whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and 
was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his 
sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory 
cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon 
the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo 10 
heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling 
pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had ren- 
dered him qifite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in 
those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could 
not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, 15 
when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something 
like the following dialogue ensued. 

''You graceless whelp, w^hat have you got there devouring? 
Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses 
with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but you must be 20 
eating fire, and I know not what — what have you got there, I 
say?" 

'' O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how nice the 
burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, 25 
and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that 
shoald eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, 
soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust 
the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shout- 30 
ing out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O 
Lord!" — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all 
the while as if he would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint w^hile he grasped the abominable 
thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for 35 
an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his 
fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy 
to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, whicli, make 
what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether 



148 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a 
little tedious) both father and son fairly set down to the mess, 
and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of 
the litter. 
5 Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for 
the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple 
of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon 
the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was 

10 burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires 
from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, 
others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure 
was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, 
which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, 

15 seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length 
they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father 
and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an incon- 
siderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food 
itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, 

20 when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt 
pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into 
the box. He handled it, and they all handled it ; and burning 
their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and 
nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against 

25 the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge 
had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, 
strangers, reporters, and all present — without leaving the box, 
or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a 
simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

30 The judge, who was a shrew^d fellow, winked at the manifest 
iniquity of the decision ; and when the court was dismissed, 
went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for 
love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town-house was 
observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there 

35 was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and 
pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance- 
offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and 
slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of 
architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 149 

this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, 
says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a 
discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, 
might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity 
of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the 5 
rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came 
in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such 
slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, 
and seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way among 
mankind. 10 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above 
given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so danger- 
ous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these 
days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that 
pretext and excuse might be found in roast pig. 15 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis^ I will 
maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps ohsoniorum.^ 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig and 
pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and tender suckling 

— under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty — with no 20 
original speck of the amor immunditice, the hereditary failing 
of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not broken, 
but something between a childish treble and a grumble — the 
mild forerunner, or prceludium, of a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate 25 
them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the exterior 
tegument! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the 
crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is 
well called — the very teeth are invited to their share of the 30 
pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resist- 
ance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but an 
indeflnable sweetness growing up to it — the tender blossoming 
of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the 
first innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's 35 
yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna 

— or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and 
running into each other, that both together make but one 
ambrosian result or common substance. 



150 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Behold him while he is " doing " — it seemeth rather a 

refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive 

to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! — Now he is 

just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age ! he 

5 hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth ! — 

wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness 

and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood ^t 

Ten to one he w^ould have proved a glutton, a sloven, an 

10 obstinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of 

filthy conversation — from these sins he is happily snatched 

away — 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care"^ — 

15 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his stom- 
ach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver bolteth him 
in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful 
stomach of the judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might 
be content to die. 

20 He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is in- 
deed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet so 
like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would dc 
well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth 
and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses. 

25 she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierce- 
ness and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate 
— she meddle th not wdth the appetite — and the coarsest 
hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of the 

30 ai3]3etite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the cen- 
sorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the 
weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues 
and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled 

35 without hazard, he is — good throughout. No part of him is 
better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little 
means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. 
He is all neighbours' fare. 



f 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 151 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a 
share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few 
as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great 
an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper 
satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "en- 5 
dear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door 
chickens (those "tame villatic"^ fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, 
barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love 
to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But 
a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 10 
" give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it 
is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours to extra- 
domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pre- 
text of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly 
adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. — It 15 
argues an insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My 
good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holi- 
day without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my 
pocket, had dismissed me one evening w4th a smoking plum- 20 
cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over 
London Bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have 
no doubt, at this time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had 
no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, 
and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I made him 25 
a present of — the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, 
as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satis- 
faction ; but, before I had got to the end of the bridge, my 
better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how 
ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good .30 
gift away to a stranger that I had never seen before, and who 
might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of 
the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I 
myself, and not another — would eat her nice cake — and what 
should 1 say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I 35 
was to part with her pretty present ! — and the odour of that 
spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure 
and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her 
joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she 



152 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last 
— and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out- 
of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished never 
to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old 

5 grey impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these 
tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with some- 
thing of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The 
age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire 

10 (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might 
have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally 
so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like 
refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn 
the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It 

15 might impart a gusto. — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, 
when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning 
and pleasantry on both sides, '^ Whether, supposing that the 
flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (^per fla- 

20 gellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of 
a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive 
in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting 
the animal to death ? " I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread 

25 crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild 
sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole 
onion tribe. Barbecue^ your whole hogs to your palate, steep 
them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank 
and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, or make them 

30 stronger than they are — but consider, he is a weakling — a 
flower. 



A BACHELOR^S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR 
OF MARRIED PEOPLE 

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in not- 
ing down the infirmities of Married People, to console myself 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 153 

for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by 
remaining as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever 
made any great impression upon me, or had much tendency to 
strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions which I took up 5 
long ago upon more substantial considerations. What oftenest 
offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an 
error of quite a different description ; — it is that they are too 
loving. 

Not too loving neither : that does not explain my meaning. 10 
Besides, why should that offend me? The very act of separat- 
ing themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller 
enjoyment of each other's society, implies that they prefer one 
another to all the world. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so 15 
undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people 
so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment with- 
out being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, 
that you are not the object of this preference. Now there are 
some things which give no offence, while implied or taken for 20 
granted merely; but expressed, there is much offence in them. 
If a man were to accost the first homely-featured or plain- 
dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, 
that she was not handsome or rich enough for him, and he 
could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill- 25 
manners ; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access 
and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never 
yet thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this 
as clearly as if it were put into words ; but no reasonable young 
woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. 30 
Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, 
and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not 
the happy man, — the lady's choice. It is enough that I know 
I am not : I do not want this perpetual reminding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made 35 
sufficiently mortifying, but these admit of a palliative. The 
knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally 
improve me; and in the rich man's houses and pictures, — his 
parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But 



154 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

the display of married happiness has none of these palliatives: 
it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least 
invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of any 
o exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of 
sight as possible, that their less favoured neighbours, seeing 
little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question the 
right. But these married monopolists thrust the most obnoxious 
part of their patent into our faces. 

10 Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency 
and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-mar- 
ried couple, — in that of the lady particularly : it tells you, that 
her lot is disposed of in this world : that you can have no hopes 
of her. It is true, I have none : nor wishes either, perhaps : 

15 but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to 
be taken for granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs w^hich those people give themselves, 
founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be 
more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow 

20 them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft 
better than we who have not had the happiness to be made 
free of the company : but their arrogance is not content within 
these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion in 
their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is 

25 immediately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young 
married lady of my acquaintance, w^ho, the best of the jest was, 
had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a 
question on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, 
respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters for the 

30 London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how 
such an old Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything 
about such matters ! 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs 
which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they 

35 generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of 
a rarity children are, — that every street and blind alley swarms 
with them, — that the poorest people commonly have them in 
most abundance, — that there are few marriages that are not 
blest with at least one of these bargains, — how often they turn 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 156 

out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to 
vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. 
— I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can pos- 
sibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes,^ indeed, 
that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. 5 
But when they are so common 

I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume with 
their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. 
But why we, who are not their natural-born subjects, should be 
expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense, — our tribute 10 
and homage of admiration, — I do not see. 

" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the 
young children ; " so says the excellent office in our Prayer- 
book appointed for the churching of women. " Happy is the 
man that hath his quiver full of them." So say I ; but then don't 15 
let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless ; — 
let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have 
generally observed that these arrows are double-headed : they 
have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the other. As for 
instance, where you come into a house which is full of children, 20 
if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of 
something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent 
caresses), you are set down as un tractable, morose, a hater of 
children. On the other hand, if you find them more than 
usually engaging, — if you are taken with their pretty man- 25 
ners, and s^t about in earnest to romp and play with them, — 
some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out 

of the room ; they^ are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does 

not like childrenT] With one or other of these forks the arrow 
is sure to hit you. .30 

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with 
their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I think it unreason- 
able to be called upon to loce them, where I see no occasion, — 
to love a whole family, perhaps eight, nine, or ten, indiscrimi- 
nately, — to love all the pretty dears, because children are so 35 
engaging ! 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my dog° : " that is 
not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set 
upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a 



156 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

lesser thing — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch 
or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my 
friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, 
because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him ; 

5 provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive what- 
ever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character, 
and an essential being of themselves: they are amiable or 
unamiable per se ; I must love or hate them as I see cause for 
either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing 

10 to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another 
being, and to be loved or hated accordingly ; they stand with 
me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. 

! but you will say, sure it is an attractive age, — there is 
something in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms 

15 us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. 

1 know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not 
even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ; but the 
prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it 
should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from 

20 another in glory ; but a violet should look and smell the 
daintiest. — I was always rather squeamish in my women and 
children. 

But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into their 
familiarity at least, before they can complain of inattention. 

25 It implies visits, and 'some kind of intercourse. But if the 
husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly foot- 
ing before marriage, — if you did not come in on the wife's 
side, — if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but 
were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their 

30 courtship was so much as thought on, — look about you — your 
tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth shall roll over 
your head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow 
cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of 
breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my 

35 acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friend- 
ship did not commence after the period of his marriage. With 
some limitations they can endure that : but that the good man 
should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship 
in which they were not consulted, though it happened before 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 157 

they knew him, — before they that are now man and wife ever 
met, — this is intolerable to them. Every loDg friendship, 
every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office 
to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince 
calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign be- 5 
fore he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted 
with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass 
current in the world. You may guess what luck generally 
befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new mint- 
ings. 10 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and 
worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all 
you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of 
fellow that said good things, hut an oddity^ is one of the ways ; 
— they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose ; — till at 15 
last the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and would 
pass over some excrescences of understanding and manner for 
the sake of a general vein of observation (not quite vulgar) 
which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are 
not altogether a humorist, — a fellow well enough to have 20 
consorted with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to 
be introduced to ladies. This maybe called the staring w^ay; 
and is that which has oftenest been put in practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony ; 
that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with 25 
their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the last- 
ing attachment founded on esteem which he has conceived 
towards you, by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that 
you say or do, till the good man, who understands well enough 
that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the 30 
debt of gratitude which is due to so much candour, and by 
relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two in 
his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly level of moderate 
esteem, — that ^* decent affection and complacent kindness " 
towards you, where she herself can join in sympathy with him 35 
without much stretch and violence to her sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so de- 
sirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent 
simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made 



158 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

their husband fond of you. If an esteem for something excel- 
lent in your moral character was that which riveted the chain 
which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want 
of poignancy in your conversation, she will cry, " I thought, my 

5 dear, you described your friend, Mr. , as a great wit ! " 

If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your 
conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content 
for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral 
deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily 

10 exclaims, " This, my dear, is your good Mr. ! " One 

good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for 
not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to her 
husband's old friend, had the candour to confess to me that 
she had often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, 

15 and that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with 
me, but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her 
expectations ; for, from her husband's representations of me, 
she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer- 
like looking man (I use her very words), the very reverse of 

20 which proved to be the truth. This was candid ; and I had the 
civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a 
standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends 
which differed so much from his own ; for my friend's dimen- 
sions as near as possible approximate to mine ; he standing five 

25 feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by 
about half an inch ; and he no more than myself exhibiting 
any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. 
These are some of the mortifications which I have encoun- 
tered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enu- 

30 merate them all would be a vain endeavour ; I shall therefore 
just glance at the very common impropriety of which married 
ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if we were their husbands, 
and vice versa. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and 
their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept 

35 me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time 

of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did 

not come home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than 
she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his 
absence. This was reversing the point of good manj^ers : for 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 159 

ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which 
we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love 
and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. 
It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, 
for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the 5 
greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and with- 
stood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would 
have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know 
no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their hus- 
bands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and decorum : 10 
therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cera- 
sia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas,° which 
I was applying to with great goodwill, to her husband at the 
other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraor- 
dinary gooseberries to my unw^edded palate in their stead. 15 

Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of 

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance 
by Koman denominations. Let them amend and change their 
manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their 
names, to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. 20 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked up the 
other day — I know not by what chance it was preserved so 
long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the Players, who 
make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of parts 
in the Twelfth-Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two-and- 25 
thirty years ago. There is something very touching in these 
old remembrances. They make us think how we once used to 
read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, singling out a 
favourite performer, and casting a negligent eye over the rest; 
but spelling out every name, down to the very mutes and ser-30 
vants of the scene ; when it was a matter of no small moment 
to us whether Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian ; 
when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore — nam€s of small 



160 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

account — had an importance, beyond what we can be con- 
tent to attribute now to the time's best actors. — " Orsino, by 
Mr. Barrymore." — What a full Shakspearian sound it carries! 
how fresh to memory arise the image and the manner of the 

gentle actor ! 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last ten or 
fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of her performance 
of such parts as Ophelia; Helena, in All's Well that Ends 
Well ; and Viola, in this play. Her voice had latterly acquired 

10 a coarseness, which suited well enough with her ISJ'ells and 
Hoydens, but in those days it sank, wdth her steady, melting 
eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory 
now chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by her plaintive 
ones. There is no giving an account how she delivered the dis- 

15 guised story of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech, that 
she had foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmonious period, 
line necessarily following line, to make up the music — yet I 
have heard it so spoken, or rather read^ not without its grace 
and beauty — but, when she had declared her sister's history to 

20 be a " blank," and that she " never told her love," there was a 
pause, as if the story had ended — and then the image of the 
" worm in the bud " came up as a new suggestion — and the 
heightened image of " Patience " still followed after that as by 
some growing (and not mechanical) process, thought springing 

25 up after thought, I would almost say, as they were watered by 
her tears. So in those fine lines 

"Write loyal cantons of contemned love — 
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills — 

there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that 
30 which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her passion ; or 

it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it 

seemed altogether without rule or law. 

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of her 

beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly excel- 
35 lent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the Clown. I 

have seen some Olivias — and those very sensible actresses too 

— who in these interlocutions have seemed to set their wits at 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 161 

the jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright emulation. 
But she used him for her sport, like what he was, to trifle a 
leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dismissed, and she 
to be the Great Lady still. She touched the imperious fantastic 
humour of the character with nicety. Her fine spacious person 6 
filled the scene. 

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so often mis- 
understood, and the general merits of the actor, who then played 
it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for pardon, if I am 
a little prolix upon these points. 10 

Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a melancholy 
phrase if taken aright. Reader — Bensley had most of the swell 
of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the 
emotions consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to 
the fancy. He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the rarest 15 
faculty among players. None that I remember possessed even 
a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's 
famous rant about glory,° or the transports of the Venetian in- 
cendiary ° at the vision of the fired city. His voice had the dis- 
sonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet. His 20 
gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affec- 
tation ; and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in 
every movement. He seized the moment of passion with the 
greatest truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking before the 
time ; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He was 25 
totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come upon 
the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did it with as 
genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of 
the gods. He let the passion or the sentiment do its own work 
without prop or bolstering. He would have scorned to mounte- 30 
bank it ; and betrayed none of that cleverness which is the bane 
of serious acting. For this reason, his Iago° was the only en- 
durable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator 
from his action could divine more of his artifice than Othello 
was supposed to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you 35 
in possession of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to 
make the audience fancy their own discernment so much greater 
than that of the Moor — who commonly stands like a great help- 
less mark set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren 

M 



162 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

spectators, to shoot their bolts° at. The lago of Bensley did 
not go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone about 
the character, natural to a general consciousness of power ; but 
none of that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain it^ 
5 self upon any little successful stroke of its knavery — as is com- 
mon with your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. 
It did not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man set- 
ting his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other chil- 
dren, who are mightily pleased at being let into the secret ; but 

10 a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature into toils 
against which no discernment was available, where the manner 
was as fathomless as the purpose seemed dark, and without 
motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was per- 
formed by Bensley with a richness and a dignity, of which (to 

15 judge from some recent castings of that character) the very 
tradition must be worn out from the stage. No manager in 
those days would have dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddely, 
or Mr. Parsons; when Bensley was occasionally absent from 
the theatre, John Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed 

20 to the part. Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes 
comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling ; but dig- 
nified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over- 
stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan ; 
and he might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our 

25 old roundhead families, in the service of a Lambert, or a Lady 
Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are misplaced in 
Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and 
falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity, 
(call it which you will), is inherent, and native to the man, not 

30 mock or affected, which latter only are the fit objects to excite 
laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, but neither buf- 
foon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his 
station, but probably not much above his deserts. We see no 
reason why he should not have been brave, honourable, accom- 

35plished. His careless committal of the ring to the ground 
(which he was commissioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a 
generosity of birth and feeling.° His dialect on all occasions is 
that of a gentleman, and a man of education. We must not 
confound him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He is 



OiV^ SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 163 

master of the household to a great Princess ; a dignity probably 
conferred upon him for other respects than age or length of 
service. Olivia, at the first indication of his supposed madness, 
declares that she " would not have him miscarry for half of her 
dowry." Does this look as if the character was meant to ap-5 
pear little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to 
his face — of what? — of being "sick of self-love," — but with 
a gentleness and considerateness which could not have been, if 
she had not thought that this particular infirmity shaded some 
virtues. His rebuke to the knight and his sottish revellers, is 10 
sensible and spirited ; and when we take into consideration the 
unprotected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard 
with which her state of real or dissembled mourning would 
draw the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, Malvolio 
might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his keeping ; 15 
as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or kins- 
men, to look to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice 
respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be 
represented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression of 
the Duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers : 20 
" Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused 
state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to 
desert him. He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir 
Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.^ There 
must have been some shadow of worth about the man ; he must 25 
have been something more than a mere vapour — a thing of 
straw, or Jack in office — before Fabian and Maria could have 
ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. There 
was some consonancy° (as he would say) in the undertaking, 
or the jest would have been too bold even for that house of 30 
misrule. 

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of Spanish 
loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. 
He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of 

1 Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild 

fowl? 
Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
Cloion. What thinkest thou of his opinion? 
Mai. I think. nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 



164 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was 
something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, 
but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish 
to see it taken down, but you felt that it w^as upon an elevation. 

5 He was magnificent from the outset ; but when the decent 
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison 
of self-love, in his conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually 
to work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha 
in person stood before you. How he went smiling to himself ! 

10 with what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! 
what a dream it was ! you were infected with the illusion, and 
did not wish that it should be removed ! you had no room for 
laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded 
itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's 

15 nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies — but in truth 
you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted — you 
felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with the 
eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a day in the 
conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, the Duke would 

20 have given his principality but for a quarter of a minute, sleep- 
ing or waking, to have been so deluded. The man seemed to 
tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in the 
clouds, to mate Hyperion.^ O ! shake not the castles of 
his pride — endure yet for a season, bright moments of confi- 

25 dence — '' stand still, ye watches of the element," that Malvolio 
may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord ! — but fate and retribu- 
tion say no — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria — the witty 
taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insupportable triumph of 
the foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — and 

30 " thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, " brings 
in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of 
this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic 
interest. There was good foolery too. Few now remember 
Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, 

35 who came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some 
few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd 
was it^ as it came out of nature's hands. It might be said to 
remain in puris naturalibus.° In expressing slowness of appre- 
hension, this actor surpassed all others. You could see the first 



ON- SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 165 

dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing 
up by little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared up 
at last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its highest merid- 
ian. He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some have had 
the power to retard their pulsation. The balloon takes less 5 
time in filling than it took to cover the expansion of his broad 
moony face over all its quarters with expression. A glimmer 
of understanding would appear in a corner of his eye, and for 
lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch a 
little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to 10 
the remainder. 

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five and 
twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn — 
they were then far finer than they are now — the accursed 
Yerulam Buildings had not encroached upon all the east side 15 
of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering 
away one or two of the stately alcoves of the terrace — the sur- 
vivor stands gaping and relationless as if it remembered its 
brother — they are still the best gardens of any of the Inns of 
Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten — have the gravest char- 20 
acter, their aspect being altogether reverend and law-breathing 
— Bacon° has left the impress of his foot upon their gravel 

walks taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon 

the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, 
whom, from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one 25 
of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful 
forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. As I 
have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing him with 
that sort of sub-indicative token of respect which one is apt to 
demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, and which rather 30 
denotes an inclination to greet him, than any positive motion 
of the body to that effect — a species of humility and will-wor- 
ship which I observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles 
than pleases the person it is offered to — when the face turning 
full upon me strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. 35 
Upon close inspection I was not mistaken. But could this 
sad thoughtful countenance be the same vacant face of folly 
which I had hailed so often under circumstances of gaiety; 
which I had never seen without a smile, or recognised but as 



166 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

the usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally flat in Fopping- 
toii,° so frothily pert in Tattle,° so impotently busy in Backbite^ ; 
so blankly divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of 
none, in Acres,*^ in Fribble,° and a thousand agreeable imper- 
Stinences? Was this the face — full of thought and carefulness 
— that had so often divested itself at will of every trace of either 
to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three 
hours at least of its furrows ! Was this the face — manly, sober, 
intelligent — w^hich I had so often despised, made mocks at, 

10 made merry with ! The remembrance of the freedoms which 
I had taken with it came upon me with a reproach of insult. 
I could have asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon me 
with a sense of injury. There is something strange as well as 
sad in seeing actors — your pleasant fellow- s particularly — sub- 

15 jected to and suffering the common lot; — their fortunes, their 
casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene, their actions 
to be amenable to poetic justice only. We can hardly connect 
them wdth more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine 
actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the 

20 stage some months ; and, as I learned afterwards, had been in 
the habit of resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day 
of his decease. In these serious walks, probably, he was divest- 
ing himself of many scenic and some real vanities — weaning 
himself from the frivolities of the lesser and the greater theatre 

25 — doing gentle penance for a life of no very reprehensible fool- 
eries, — taking oft' by degrees the buffoon mask which he might 
feel he had worn too long — and rehearsing for a more solemn 
cast of part. Dying, he "put on the weeds of Dominic.°"i 
If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not easily 

30 forget the pleasant creature, who in those days enacted the part 

1 Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection 
of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of 
wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study 
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one 
evening in Aguecheek, and recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, 
was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as the iden- 
tical Knight of the preceding evening with a "Save you, Sir Andrew. ^^ 
Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual address from a stranger, 
with a courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him off with an 
''Away, Fool:' 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 167 

of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — Richard, or rather Dicky 
Suett — for so in his life-time he delighted to be called, and 
time hath ratified the appellation — lieth buried on the north 
side of the cemetery of Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage 
and tender years were dedicated. There are who do yet re- 5 
member him at that period — his pipe clear and harmonious. 
He would often speak of his chorister days, when he was 
^' cherub Dicky." 

What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he should 
exchange the holy for the profane state ; whether he had lost 10 
his good voice (his best recommendation to that office), like Sir 
John,° '' with hallooing and singing of anthems ; " or whether he 
was adjudged to lack something, even in those early years, of 
the gravity indispensable to an occupation which professeth to 
"commerce with the skies," ° — I could never rightly learn ; 15 
but we find him, after the probation of a twelvemonth or so, 
reverting to a secular condition, and become one of us. 

I think he was not altogether of that timber out of which 
cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad 
heart — kind and therefore glad — be any part of sanctity, then 20 
might the robe of Motley, with which he invested himself with 
so much humility after his deprivation, and which he wore so 
long with so much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the 
pubjic, be accepted for a surplice — his white stole, and alhe.° 

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon 25 
the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I 
have been told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old 
men's characters. At the period in which most of us knew 
him, he was no more an imitator than he was in any true sense 
himself imitable. 30 

He was the Kobin Goodfellow of the stage. He came in to 
trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself no whit 
troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by his note 
— Ha! Ha! Ha! — sometimes deepening to Ho! Ho! Ho! 
with an irresistible accession, derived perhaps remotely from 35 
his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype of — La ! 
Thousands of hearts yet respond to the chuckling La! of 
Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by the faith- 
ful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The "force of 



168 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

nature could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these 
two syllables richer than the cuckoo. 

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his compo- 
sition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he 
5 could never have supported himself upon those two spider's 
strings, which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed 
existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him 
totter, a sigh have puffed him down ; the weight of a frown had 
staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on 

10 he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Kobin 
Goodfellow, "• thorough brake, thorough briar,"° reckless of a 
scratched face or a torn doublet. 

Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and jesters. 
They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and shambling gait, 

15 a slippery tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without-pain- 
delivered jest ; in words, light as air, venting truths deep as the 
centre ; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, sing- 
ing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. 
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of personal 

20 favourites with the town than any actors before or after. The 
difference, I take it, was this : — Jack was more beloved for his 
sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more liked 
for his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole 
conscience stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in 

25 the Children in the Wood° — but Dicky seemed like a thing, as 
Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know what conscience 
is. He put us into Vesta's^ days. Evil fled before him — not 
as from Jack, as from an antagonist, — but because it could not 
touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was de- 

30 livered from the burthen of that death ; and, when Death came 
himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him 
by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that he re- 
ceived the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed tranquil- 
lity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy to have been 

35 recorded in his epitaph — La ! La ! Bohhij ! 

The elder Palmer (of stage-trading celebrity) commonly 
played Sir Toby in those days ; but there is a solidity of wit in 
the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite fill out. 
He was as much too showy as Moody (who sometimes took the 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 169 

part) was dry and sottish. In sock ° or buskin ° there was an 
air of swaggering gentility about Jack Pahner. He was a 
gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman. His brother 
Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow in everything 
while he lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards 5 
— was a gentleman with a little stronger infusion of the latter 
ingredient; that was all. It is amazing how a little of the more 
or less makes a difference in these things. When you saw 
Bobby in the Duke's Servant,^ you said, what a pity such a 
pretty fellow was only a servant ! When you saw Jack figuring 10 
in Captain Absolute, you thought you could trace his promo- 
tion to some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow 
in his topknot, and had bought him a commission. Therefore 
Jack in Dick Amlet° was insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, — both plausible, hypocritical, and insin- 15 
uating ; but his secondary or supplemental voice still more 
decisively histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for 
the spectator ; and the dramatis personce were supposed to know 
nothing at all about it. The lies of Young W^ilding, and the 
sentiments in Joseph Surface,° were thus marked out in a sort of 20 
italics to the audience. This secret correspondence with the 
company before the curtain (which is the bane and death of 
tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some kinds of 
comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve or 
of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so 25 
indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would 
rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do 
not believe in such characters as Surface — the villain of arti- 
ficial comedy — even while you read or see them. If you did, 
they would shock and not divert you. When Ben, in Love for 30 
Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite dialogue occurs 
at his first meeti'ng with his father : — 

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw 
thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been. Been far enough, an that be all. — Well, father, 35 
and how do all at home ? how does brother Dick and brother Val ? 

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two 
years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

1 High Life Below Stairs. 



170 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Ben. Mess, that's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you 
say — Well, and how? — I have a many questions to ask you. 

Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life would 
be revolting, or rather in real life could not have co-existed 
5 with the warm-hearted temperament of the character. But 
when you read it in the spirit with which such playful selections 
and specious combinations rather than strict metaphrases ° of 
nature should be taken, or when you saw Bannister play it, it 
neither did, nor does, wound the moral sense at all. For what 

10 is Ben — the pleasant sailor which Bannister gives us — but a 
piece of satire — a creation of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy 
combination of all the accidents of a sailor's character — his 
contempt of money — his credulity to women — with that nec- 
essary estrangement from home which it is just within the 

15 verge of credibility to suppose might produce such an hallucina- 
tion as is here described. We never think the worst of Ben for 
it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But when an actor 
comes, and instead of the delightful phantom — the creature 
dear to half -belief — which Bannister exhibited — displays 

20 before our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping° sailor — 
a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — when 
instead of investing it wdth a delicious confusedness of the head, 
and a veering undirected goodness of purpose — he gives to it a 
downright daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of 

25 its actions ; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character 
with a pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be 
judged by them alone — we feel the discord of the thing; the 
scene is disturbed ; a real man has got in among the dramatis 
personce, and puts them out. We want the sailor turned out. 

30 We feel that his true place is not behind the curtain but in the 
first or second gallery. 



OX THE ABTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 
CENTURY 

The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite 
extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar° show their 
heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put down 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 111 

instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a few wild 
speeches, an occasional license of dialogue? I think not alto- 
gether. The business of their dramatic characters will not 
stand the moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle 
gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an even- 5 
ing, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of 
profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or 
guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic 
interests left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks 
of two hours duration, and of no after consequence, with the 10 
severe eyes which inspect real vices with their bearings upon 
two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not 
reducible in life to the point of strict morality), and take it all for 
truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge 
him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there 15 
is no appeal to the dramatis personce, his peers. We have been 
spoiled with — not sentimental comedy — but a tyrant far more 
pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the 
exclusive and all-devouring drama of common life; where the 
moral point is everything ; where, instead of the fictitious half- 20 
believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy), 
we recognise ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, . 
patrons, enemies, — the same as in life, — with an interest in i 
what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we cannot f 
afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, 25 
to compromise or slumber for a moment. What is there trans- 
acting, by no modification is made to affect us in any other | 
manner than the same events or characters would do in our 
relationships of life. We carry our fireside concerns to the 
theatre with us.\ We do not go thither, like our ancestors, to 30 
escape from the pressure of reality, so much, as to confirm our 
experience of it ; to make assurance double, and take a bond of 
fate.° We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the 
mournful privilege of Ulysses ° to descend twice to the shades. 
All that neutral ground of character, which stood between vice 35 
and virtue ; or which in fact was indifferent to neither, where 
neither properly was called in question ; that happy breathing- 
place from the burthen of ^a perpetual moral questioning — the 
sanctuary and quiet Alsatia° of hunted casuistry — is broken up 



172 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society. The 
privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not 
dally with images, or names, of wrong. AVe bark like foolish 
dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic repre- 
5 sentation of disorder, and fear a jDainted pustule. In our 
anxiety that our morality should not take cold, we wrap it up 
in a great blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and 
sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to 
10 answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond 
the diocese of the strict conscience, — not to live always in the 
precincts of the law courts, — but now and then, for a dream- 
while or so, to imagine a world with no meddling restrictions 
— to get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot f ollow" me — 

15 Secret shades 

Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jove. 

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and more 
healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly for having 

20 respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not know 
how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the perusal 
of one of Congreve's' — nay, why shoidd I not add even of 
Wycherley's° — comedies. I am the gayer at least for it ; and 
I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy in any shape 

25 with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. 
They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairyland. 
Take one of their characters, male or female (with few excep- 
tions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my 
virtuous indignati9n shall rise against the profligate wretch 

30 as warmly as the Catos of the pit° could desire ; because in a 
modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The 
standard of police is the measure of political justice. The at- 
mosphere will blight it ; it cannot live here. It has got into a 
moral world, where it has no business, from which it must needs 

35 fall headlong ; as dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, as a 
Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered unawares into the 
sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels. But in its own world 
do we feel the creature is so very bad? — The Fainalls*^ and the 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 173 

Mirabels,° the Dorimants° and the Lady Touchwoods,° in their 
own sphere, do not offend my moral sense ; in fact, they do not 
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. 
They break through no laws or conscientious restraints. They 
know of none. They have got out of Christendom into the 5 
land^ — what shall I call it? — of cuckoldry — the Utopia of 
gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect free- 
dom. It is altogether a speculative scene of things, which has 
no reference whatever to the world that is. N'o good person can 
be justly offended as a spectator, because no good person suffers 10 
on the stage. Judged morally, every character in these plays — 
the few exceptions only are mistakes — is alike essentially vain 
and worthless. The great art of Congreve is especially shown 
in this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes — some 
little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted — 15 
not only anything like a faultless character, but any pretensions 
to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this 
designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy as the design 
(if design) was bold. I used to wonder at the strange power 
which his Way of the World in particular possesses of interest- 20 
ing you all along in the pursuits of characters, for whom you 
absolutely care nothing — for you neither hate nor love his 
personages — and I think it is owing to this very indifference 
for any, that you endure the whole. He has spread a privation 
of moral light, I will call it, rather than by the ugly name of 25 
palpable darkness, over his creations ; and his shadows flit 
before you without distinction or preference. Had he intro- 
duced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revul- 
sion of the judgment to actual life and actual duties, the 
impertinent Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery 30 
of deformities, which now are none, because w^e think them 
none. 

Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his friend 
Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets, — the busi- 
ness of their brief existence, the undivided pursuit of lawless 35 
gallantry. No other spring of action, or possible motive of 
conduct, is recognised ; principles which, universally acted upon, 
must reduce this frame of things to a chaos. But we do them 
wrong in so translating them. No such effects are produced, in 



174 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

their world. When we are among them, we are amongst a 
chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. ]^o 
reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings — for 
they have none among them. No peace of families is violated 
5 — for no family ties exist among them. No purity of the mar- 
riage bed is stained — for none is supposed to have a being. 
No deep affections are disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are 
snapped asunder — for affection's depth and wedded faith are 
not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right nor wrong, 

10 — gratitude or its ojDposite, — claim or duty, — paternity or son- 
ship. Of w^hat consequence is it to Virtue, or how is she at all 
concerned about it, whether Sir Simon° or Dapperwit^ steal 
away Miss Martha ° ; or who is the father of Lord Froth's° or 
Sir Paul Pliant's° children ? 

15 The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as un- 
concerned at the issues, for life or death, as at the battle of the 
frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part against 
the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare not contem- 
plate an Atlantis,° a scheme, out of which our coxcombical moral 

20 sense is for a little transitory ease excluded. We have not the 
courage to imagine a state of things for which there is neither 
reward nor punishment. We cling to the painful necessities of 
shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams. 

Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon grow- 

25 ing old, it is something to have seen the School for Scandal in 
its glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, 
but gathered some allays of the sentimental comedy which 
followed theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, 
though it continues, at long intervals, to be announced in the 

30 bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph 
Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful 
solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice — 
to express it in a word — the downright acted villany of the 
part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wicked- 

35 ness, — the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, — which made 
Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs 
conclude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous than 
myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he divided the 
palm with me with his better brother; that, in fact, I liked 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 175 

him quite as well. Xot but there are passages, — like that, for 
instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor 
relation, — incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon by 
the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy, 
either of which must destroy the other — but over these ob- 5 
structions Jack's manner floated him so lightly, that a re- 
fusal from him no more shocked you, than the easy compliance 
of Charles gave you in reality any pleasure; you got over 
the paltry question as quickly as you could, to get back into 
the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. The 10 
highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character counter- 
acted every disagreeable ijnpression which you might have re- 
ceived from the contrast, supposing them real, between the two 
brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with the same faith 
with which you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant 15 
reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The 
comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve 
with sentimental incompatibilities ; the gaiety upon the whole 
is buoyant ; but it required the consummate art of Palmer to 
reconcile the discordant elements. 20 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would not 
dare to do the part in the same manner. He would instinctively 
avoid every turn which might tend to unrealise, and so to make 
the character fascinating. He must take his cue from his spec- 
tators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly 25 
opposed to each other as the deathbeds of those geniuses are 
contrasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have disap- 
peared from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, 
of St. Paul's Churchyard memory — (an exhibition as venerable 
as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and 30 
good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehen- 
sions of the former, — and truly the grim phantom with his 
reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised, — so finely con- 
trast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it 
in like honey and butter, — with which the latter submits to 35 
the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet 
with tiie apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. 
What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet halfway 
the stroke of such a delicate mower? — John Palmer was twice 



176 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing to you all the 
while that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You 
had the first intimation of a sentiment before it was on his lips. 
His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose 
5 that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at 
all of it. What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, 
was overreached by the puppetry — or the thin thing (Lady 
Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a plethory? 
The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were not concerned in 
10 it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage in good time, that he 
did not live to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old 
Teazle King, too, is gone in good .time. His manner would 
scarce have passed current in our da}^ We must love or hate 

— acquit or condemn — censure or pity — exert our detestable 
15 coxcombry of moral judgment upon everything. Joseph Surface, 

to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain — no 
compromise — his first appearance must shock and give horror 

— his specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of 
our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that 

20 no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to 
come, of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles 
(the real canting person of the scene — for the hypocrisy of 
Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's pro- 
fessions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) 

25 must be loved, and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable 
reality with another. Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the 
comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings 
(while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, 
as they were meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he must 

30 be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a per- 
son towards whom duties are to be acknowledged — the genuine 
crim-con-antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To realise 
him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must 
have the downright pungency of life — must (or should) make 

35 you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predica- 
ment would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The deli- 
cious scenes w^hich give the play its name and zest, must affect 
you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation 
of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crab- 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 111 

tree and Sir Benjamin — those poor snakes that live but in the 
sunshine of your mirth — must be ripened by this hot-bed process 
of realization into asps or amphisbsenas ; and Mrs. Candour — 
O ! frightful ! — become a hooded serpent. O ! who that remem- 
bers Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly of the School 5 
for Scandal — in those two characters; and charming natural 
Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the 
fine lady of comedy, in this latter part — would forego the true 
scenic delight — the escape from life — the oblivion of conse- 
quences — the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection — 10 
those Saturnalia^ of two or three brief hours, well won from the 
world — to sit instead at one of our modern plays — to have his 
coward conscience^ (that forsooth must not be left for a moment) 
stimulated with perpetual appeals — dulled rather, and blunted, 
as a faculty without repose must be — and his moral vanity 15 
pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, 
lives saved without the spectator's risk, and fortunes given away 
that cost the author nothing ? 

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts 
as this manager's comedy. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. 20 
Abington in Lady Teazle ; and Smith, the original Charles, had 
retired w^hen I first saw it. The rest of the characters, with 
very slight exceptions, remained. I remember it was then the 
fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles 
after Smith ; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was 25 
more airy, and took the eye with a certain gaiety of person. He 
brought with him no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had 
not to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty 
declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone 
for. His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one 30 
of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the 
weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity 
than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came 
steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a 
grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only 35 
served to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision. 
It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of 
his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he 
delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine 



178 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

how any of them could be altered for the better. No man could 
deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of Congreve or of 
Wycherley — because none understood it — half so well as 
John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was, to my 
5 recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the intervals 
of tragic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of an 
heroic character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But 
he always seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and 
witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been 

10 touched by any since him — the playful court-bred spirit in 
which he condescended to the players in Hamlet — the sportive 
relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard — dis- 
appeared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors — 
but they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy 

15 — politic savings, and fetches of the breath — husbandry of the 
lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist — rather, 
I think than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less 
painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance, — 
the '^lidless dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy. 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 

20 Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this 
extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when I retired to 
my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a manner 
as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of it, by 
conjuring up the most opposite associations. I resolved to be 

25 serious. I raised up the gravest topics of life ; private misery, 
public calamity. All would not do : 

-There the antic sate 



Mocking our state - 

his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the strange 

30 things which he had raked together — his serpentine rod 

sw^SS^^S about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the rest 



THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 179 

of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder commentary 
— till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved 
itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in the first 
instance it had driven away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall into 5 
slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed 
me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five 
hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which, 
whether you will or no, come when you have been taking 
opium — all the strange combinations, which this strangest of 10 
all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into, from 
the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of the town 
for the loss of the now^ almost forgotten Edwin. O for the 
power of the pencil to have fixed them when I awoke 1 A 
season or two since, there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. 15 
I do not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. 
In richness and variety, the latter would not fall far short of the 
former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but 
what a one it is !) of Liston° ; but Munden has none that you 20 
can properly pin down, and call Ms. When you think he has 
exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with 
your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of 
features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion ; not so much 
a comedian, as a company. If his name could be multiplied 25 
like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he 
alone, literally makes faces : applied to any other person, the 
phrase is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the 
human countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips 
for faces, as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them 30 
out as easily. I should not be surprised to see him some day 
put out the head of a river-horse : or come forth a pewitt, or 
lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry — in 
old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the 35 
pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man ; when he 
has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a 
people. I have seen some faint approaches to this sort of 
excellence in other players. But in the grand grotesque of 



180 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

farce, Munden stands out as single and unaccompanied as 
Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers. The 
school of Munden began, and must end, with himself. 

Can any man ivonder^ like him ? can any man see ghosts, like 
5 him ? or fight tvith his own shadow — " sessa° " — as he does in 
that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston — 
where his alternations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and 
from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the 
spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were 

10 being acted before him. Who like him can throw, or ever 
attempted to throw, a preternatural interest over the common- 
est daily-life objects ? A table or a joint-stool, in his conception, 
rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's^ chair. It is 
invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak 

15 of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firma- 
ment. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli,° 
rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden 
antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his 
ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks 

20 seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by 
him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of 
mutton in its quiddity .° He stands wondering, amid the 
commonplace materials of life, like primseval man with the 
sun and stars about him. 



THE LAST ESSAYS 



ELIA 



A Sequel to Essays published under 

That Name 



PREFACE 

BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA 

This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been 
in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to 
nature. 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the 
thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted ; 5 
and a two years and a half existence has been a tolerable 
duration for a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard 
objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude 
they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, incondite things — 10 
villanously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and 
phrases.° They had not been his, if they had been other than 
such; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a 
self -pleasing quaintness, than to aft'ect a naturalness (so called) 
that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been 15 
pronounced by some who did not know, that what he tells us, 
as of himself, was often true only (historically) of another ; as 
in a former Essay (to save many instances) — where under the 
Jirst person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn 
estate of a country -boy placed at a London school, far from his 20 
friends and connections — in direct opposition to his own early 
history. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own 
identity the griefs and affections of another — making himself 
many, or reducing many unto himself — then is the skilful 
novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine, speaking 25 
of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, 
therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the 
intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under 
cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless 

183 



184 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story 
modestly ? 

My late friend was in many respects a singular character. 
Those who did not like him, hated him ; and some, who once 
5 liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, 
he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en 
out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist 
he would pass for a free-thinker ; while the other faction set 

10 him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied 
his sentiments. Few understood him ; and I am not certain 
that at all times he quite understood himself. He too much 
affected that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful 
speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He w^ould 

15 interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest; and yet, 
perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. 
Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit 
of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, 
forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed determined that 

20 no one else should play that part when he was present. He 
w?is petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have 
seen him sometimes in what is called good company, but where 
he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd 
fellow; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he would 

25 stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, 
if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the 
evening. It was hit or miss with him ; but nine times out of 
ten he contrived by this device to send away a whole company 
his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, 

30 and his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He 
has been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was 
but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He 
chose his companions for some individuality of character which 
they manifested. — Hence, not many persons of science, and 

35 few professed literati, were of his councils. They w^ere, for the 
most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such 
people commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman 
of settled (though moderate) income, he passed with most of 
them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake. 



PREFACE 185 

His intimados, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a 
ragged regiment. He found them floating on the surface of 
society ; and the colour, or something else, in the weed pleased 
him. The burrs stuck to him — but they were good and loving 
burrs for all that. Pie never greatly cared for the society of 5 
what are called good people. If any of these were scandalised 
(and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it. When 
he has been remonstrated with for not making more concessions 
to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking, what 
one point did these good people ever concede to him ? He was 10 
temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little 
on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian 
weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he 
would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the friendly 
vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with 15 
it! the ligaments which tongue-tied him were loosened, and the 
stammerer proceeded a statist. 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that 
my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow 
obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches 20 
of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how 
slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him 
latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettish ness, 
which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his 
suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children 25 
belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and 
curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. '' They 
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He 
had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like 
anything important and parochial. He thought that he 30 
approached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general 
aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable charac- 
ter, and kept a waiy eye upon the advances of age that should 
so entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with 
people younger than himself. He did not conform to the march 35 
of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners 
lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. 
The toga virilis° never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The 
impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the 



186 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses ; but such 
as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

I DO not know a pleasure more a:ffecting than to range at 
will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family man- 
5sion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion 
than envy : and contemplations on the great and good, whom 
we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for 
us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, 
and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same differ- 

lOence of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty 
and a crowded church. In .the latter it is chance but some 
present human frailty — an act of inattention on the part of 
some of the auditory — or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain- 
glory, on that of the preacher, puts us by° our best thoughts, 

15 disharmonising the place and the occasion. But would'st thou 
know the beauty of holiness ? — go alone on some week-day, 
borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool 
aisles of some country church : think of the piety that has 
kneeled there — the congregations, old and young, that have 

20 found consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile parish- 
ioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting com- 
parisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself 
become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel 
and weep around thee. 

25 Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some 
few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old 
great house with which I had been impressed in this way in 
infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled 
it down ; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have 

30 perished, — that so much solidity with magnificence could not 
have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 
which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 187 

and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to — an anti- 
quity. 

I was astonished at the indisfcinction of everything. Where 
had stood the great gates? What bounded the court-yard? 
Whereabout did the out-houses commence? a few bricks only 5 
lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spa- 
cious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. 
The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of 10 
destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have felt 
the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to 
spare a plank at least out of the cheerful storeroom, in whose 
hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass- 
plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary 15 
wasp that ever haunted it about me — it is in mine ears now, as 
oft as summer returns ; or a panel of the yellow-room. 

Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic 
in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so much better than 
painting — not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots — 20 
at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting 
its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage 
in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, 
staring reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider 
than his descriptions. Actseon^ in mid sprout, with the unap- 25 
peas able prudery of Diana ; and the still more provoking and 
almost culinary coolness of Dan° Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliber- 
ately divesting of Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle° died — 
whereinto I have crept, but always in the day-time, with a pas- 30 
sion of fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold 
communication with the past. — How shall they build it up 
again f 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but 
that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere 35 
apparent. Its furniture was still standing — even to the tar- 
nished gilt leather battledores, and crumbling feathers of shut- 
tlecocks in the nursery, which told that children had once played 
there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of 



188 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



every apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and 
worshipped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of 
thought as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. 
5 So strange a passion for the place possessed me in those years, 
that, though there lay — T shame to say how few roods distant 
from the mansion — half hid by trees, what I judged some 
romantic lake, such was the spell which bound me to the house, 
and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and proper pre- 

10 cincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; and not till 
late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to 
my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the Lacus 
Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive pros- 
pects — and those at no great distance from the house — I was 

15 told of such — what were they to me, being out of the boun- 
daries of my Eden? — So far from a wish to roam, I would 
have drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my chosen 
prison ; and have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of 
those excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with th^ 

20 garden-loving poet° — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines; 
And oh so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place ; 
f,- But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 

^ Ere I your silken bondage break, 

Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me through. 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides — the low- 
30 built roof — parlours ten feet by ten — frugal boards, and all 
the homeliness of home — these were the condition of my 
birth — the wholesome soil which I was planted in. Yet, with- 
out impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to 
have had glances of something beyond; and to have taken, if 
35 but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great 
fortune. 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to have been 
born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper 
terms than to be obliged to an importunate race of ancestors ; 



1 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 189 

and the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, revolving 
the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those 
sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as 
those who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal 
merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea ? 5 
Is it trenchant to their swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur 
can ? or torn away like a tarnished garter ? ^ 

What, else, w^ere the families of the great to us ? what pleasure 
should we take in their tedious genealogies, or tlieir capitulatory 
brass monuments ? What to us the uninterrupted current of 10 
their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a cognate 
and correspondent elevation ? ""^ 

Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon 
that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, 
Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon 15 
thy mystic characters — thy emblematic supporters, with their 
prophetic '' Resurgam "° — till, every dreg of peasantry purging 
off, I received into myself Very Gentility ? Thou w^ert first in 
my morning eyes; and of nights, hast detained my steps from 
bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dream- 20 
ing on thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritable change 
of blood, and not as empirics have fabled, by transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I 
know not, 1 inquired not; but its fading rags, and colours 25 
cobw^eb-stained, told that its subject was of two centuries 
back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas, — 
feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln — did I in 
less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this 30 
once proud ^gon°? repaying by a backward triumph the 
insults he might possibly have heaped in his life-time upon my 
poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of 
the mansion had least reason to complain. They had long 35 
forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and I 
was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, 
to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s° ; and not the 



190 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

present family of that name, who had fled the old waste 
places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as 
I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, 

5 one — and then another — would seem to smile, reaching for- 
ward from the canvas, to recognise the new relationship ; while 
the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their 
dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity. 

That Beauty, with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb — 

10 that hung next the great bay window — with the bright yellow 

H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so like my Alice° ! 

— I am persuaded she was a true Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. 

Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its 

mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars — stately busts in 

15 marble — ranged round : of whose countenances, young reader 
of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, 
had most of my wonder; but the mild Galba had my love. 
There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of 
immortality. Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one 

20 chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror 
of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so common 
since, that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine too, — whose else? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its 
sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising 

25 backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots 
now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from 
the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and 
glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretch- 
ing still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the 

30 haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, 
with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist 
not ; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer 
worship to Pan or to Sylvanus° in their native groves, than I 
to that fragmental mystery. 

35 Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently 
in your idol-worship, walks and windings of Blakesmoor ! for 
this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your 
pleasant places ? I sometimes think that as men, when they 
die, do not die all, so of their extingnished habitations there 
may be a hope — a germ to be revivified. 



POOR RELATIONS 191 



POOR RELATIONS 



A Poor Relation — is the most irrelevant thing in nature, — 
a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an odious approxima- 
tion, — a haunting conscience, — a preposterous shadow, length- 
ening in the noon-tide of your prosperity, — an unwelcome 
remembrancer, — a perpetually recurring mortification, — a 5 
drain on your purse, — a more intolerable dun upon your pride, 

— a drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, — a 
stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in 
your garment, — a death's head at your banquet, — Agathocles' 
pot,° — a Mordecai in your gate,° — a Lazarus at your door,° — ifl 
a lion in your path,° — a frog in your chamber,° — a fly in your 
ointment,^ — a mote in your eye,"" — a triumph to your enemy, 

— an apology to your friends, — the one thing not needful, — 
the hail in harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sw^eet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you ^' That is 15 

Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and respect ; that 

demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertain- 
ment. He entereth smiling, and — embarrassed. He holdeth 
out his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back again. 
He casually looketh in about dinner-time — when the table is 20 
full. He o£Eereth to go away, seeing you have company — but 
is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two 
children are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh 
upon open days, when your wife says, with some complacency, 

" My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He remem- 25 

bereth birth-days — and professeth he is fortunate to have 
stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being 
small — yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice 
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port — yet will 
be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a 30 
stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who 
are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. 
The guests think '' they have seen him before." Every one 
speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take him to 
be a — tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to 35 
imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too 



192 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With 
half the familiarity he might pass for a casual dependant; with 
more boldness he would be in no danger of being taken for 
what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him 
5 more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a 
country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 'tis 
odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take him 
for one. He is asked to make one at the whist table ; refuseth 
on the score of poverty, and — resents being left out. When 

10 the company break up, he proifereth to go for a coach — and 
lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will 
thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote — of the 
family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as 
" he is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to 

15 institute what he calleth — favourable comparisons. With a 
reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of 
your furniture ; and insults you with a special commendation of 
your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more 
elegant shape ; but, after all, there was something more 

20 comfortable about the old tea-kettle — which you must remem- 
ber. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having 
a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not 
so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; 
and did not know till lately, that such-and-such had been the 

25 crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his com- 
pliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; 
and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as 
precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. 
I There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a female 

SQfPoor Relation. You may do something with the other ; you 

/ may pass him of£ tolerably well ; but your indigent she-relative 

/ is hopeless. " He is an old humorist," you may say, " and 

affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than 

folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a Char- 

35 acter at your table, and truly he is one." But in the indications 
of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses 
below herself from caprice. The truth must out without 

shuffling. '' She is plainly related to the L 's ; or what does she 

at their house ? " She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. 



POOR RELATIONS 193 

Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is 
something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the 
former evidently predominates. She is most provokingiy 
humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He 
may require to be repressed sometimes — aliquando sufflaminandus 5 
eraf — but there is no raising her. You send her soup at 
dinner, and she begs to be lielped — after the gentlemen. 

Mr. requests the honour of taking wine with her; she 

hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former — 
because he does. She calls the Servant Sir ; and insists on not 10 
troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises 
her. The children's governess takes upon her to correct her, 
when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the 
disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity con- 15 
stituting a claim to acquaintance^ may subject the spirit of a 
gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him 
and a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually 
crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who 
persists in calling him "her son Dick." But she has where- 20 
withal in the end to recompense his indignities, and float liim 
again upon the brilliant surface, under which it had been her 
seeming business and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, 
besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in 
real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor 25 

W was of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and 

a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much 
pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of that sort 
which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a 
distance ; it only sought to ward off derogation from itself. It 30 
was the principle of self-respect carried as far as it could go, 
without infringing upon that respect which he would have 
every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have 
you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel 
have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and our 35 
tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue 
clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways 
of the town with him to elude notice, when we have been 
out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneering and 



194 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

prying metropolis. W went, sore with these notions, to 

Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, 
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in 
him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion 
5 from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school 
array) clung to him with Nessian venom. ° He thought him- 
self ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer° must have 
walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his young days, pos- 
sibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the 

10 depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor 
student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among 
books, which insult not ; and studies, that ask no questions of 
a youth's finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom 
cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing 

15 influence of studious pursuits was upon him to soothe and to 
abstract. Pie was almost a healthy man ; when the wayward- 
ness of his fate broke out against him a second and worse 

malignity. The father of W had hitherto exercised the 

humble profession of house-painter, at ]^ , near Oxford. 

20 A supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges had now 
induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of 
being employed upon some public works which were talked of. 
From that moment I read in the countenance of the young 
man, the determination which at length tore him from 

25 academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with 
our Universities, the distance between the gownsmen and 
the townsmen, as they are called — the trading part of the 
latter especially — is carried to an excess that would appear 
harsh and incredible. The temperament of W 's father was 

30 diametrically the reverse of his own. Old \Y was a little, 

busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, 
w^ould stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that 
wore the semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber- 

35 fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously 
and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not 

last. W must change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. 

He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains 
the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure 



POOR RELATIONS 195 

the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with 

W , the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of 

his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the 

High-street to the back of ***** college, where W 

kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. 5 
I ventured to rally him — finding him in a better mood — upon 
a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man, 
whose affairs were beginning to. flourish, had caused to be set 
up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, 
either as a token of prosperity or badge of gratitude to his 10 

saint. W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew 

his mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's table, 
the next morning, announced that he had accepted a commis- 
sion in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was 
among tlie first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian .° 15 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treat- 
ing half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so emi- 
nently painful ; but this theme of poor relationship is replete 
with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, 
that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. 20 
The earliest impressions which I received on this matter are 
certainly not attended w^ith anything painful, or very humili- 
ating, in the recalling. At my father's table (no very splendid 
one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of 
an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely 25 
appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity ; his 
words few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in his 
presence. I had little inclination to have done so — for my 
cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was 
appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A 30 
peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other 
occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to 
think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of 
him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a world 
ago at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I 35 
knew to be a place where all the money was coined — and I 
thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of 
the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed 
above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy 



196 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied 
him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning ; a 
captive — a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. 
Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in 
5 spite of an habitual general respect which we all in common 
manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand 
up against him in some argument touching their youthful 
days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided 
(as most of my readers know) between the dw^ellers on the hill 

10 and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious 
division between the boys who lived above (however brought 
together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal 
residence was on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in 
the code of these young Grotiuses.° My father had been a 

15 leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general 
superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own 
faction) over the Below Boys (so were they called), of which 
party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot 
vv^ere the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon w^hich 

20 the old gentleman was ever brought out — and bad blood bred ; 
even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) 
of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon 
advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon 
some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster ; in the general 

25 preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, 
the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a 
conciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. 
Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remem- 
bered with anguish the thought that came over me : " Perhaps 

30 he will never come here again." He had been pressed to take 
another plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as 
the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had refused 
with a resistance amounting to rigour, "when my aunt, an old 
Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with 

35 my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out 
of season — uttered the following memorable application — " Do 
take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every 
day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time — but he 
took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argu- 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 197 

ment had intervened between them, to utter with an emphasis 
which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I write 
it — "Woman, you are superannuated." John Billet did not 
survive long, after the digesting of this affront ; but he sur- 
vived long enough to assure me that peace was actually re- 5 
stored ! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was 
discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned 
the offence. He died at the Mint (Anno 1781) where he had 
long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence ; and 
with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were 10 
found in his escritoir after his decease, left the world, blessing- 
God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never 
been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor 
Relation. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS OJST BOOKS AND READING 

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the 15 
forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality 
and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his 
own. — Lord Foppington, in The Eelapse^ 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck 
with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off read- 20 
ing altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. 
At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must con- 
fess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other 
people's thoughts. I dream, away my life in others' specula- 
tions. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am 25 
not walking, T am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books 
think for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury^ is not too genteel for 
me, nor Jonathan Wild° too low. I can read anything which I 
call a hook. There are things in that shape which I cannot 30 
allow for such. 

In this catalogue of books ichich are no books — hiblia a-biblia 
— I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught 
Boards bound and lettered on the back. Scientific Treatises, 



198 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon,° 
Robertson,° Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those 
volumes which " no gentleman's library should be without ; " 
the Histories of Flavins Josephus° (that learned Jew), and 

5 Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read 
almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so 
unexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in hooks' 
clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true 

10 shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legiti- 
mate occupants. To reach down a wxll-bound semblance of a 
volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening 
what " seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Popu- 
lation Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find — 

15 Adam Smith. ° To view a well-arranged assortment of block- 
headed Encyclopaedias (Angiicanas or Metropolitanas) set out 
in an array of Kussia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good 
leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios ; would 
renovate Paracelsus° himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to 

20 look like himself again in the world. I never see these impos- 
tors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in 
their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a 
volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be 

25 afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscrimi- 
nately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in 
full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs 
ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare, or a Milton (unless the 
first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. 

30 The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of 
them (the things themselves -being so common), strange to say, 
raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the 
owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a 
little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover 

35 of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn-out appearance, nay, 
the very odour (beyond Russia) if we w^ould not forget kind 
feelings in fastidiousness, of an old '' Circulating Library " 
Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield° ! How they speak of the 
thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight ! 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 199 

— of the lone sempstress, whom the}^ may have cheered (mil- 
liner, or harder- working mantua-maker) after her long day's 
needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched 
an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some 
Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents ! Who 5 
would have them a whit less soiled ? What better condition 
could we desire to see them in? 

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands 
from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class 
of perpetually self -reproductive volumes — Great Nature's Ster- 10 
eotypes — -we see them individually perish with less regret, be- 
cause we know the copies of them to be '' eterne." But where 
a book is at once both good and rare — where the individual is 
almost the species, and when that perishes, 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 15 

That can its light relumine ; — 

such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, 
by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently 
durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hope- 20 
less ever to be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as 
Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor,^ Milton in his prose works. 
Fuller — of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, 
though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we 
know have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) 25 
in the national heart, so as to become stock books — it is good 
to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for 
a First Folio of Shakspeare.° I rather prefer the common 
editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, 
which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps or m.odest remem- 30 
brancers, to the text ; and without pretending to any supposable 
emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare gal- 
lery engravings, which did. I have a community of feeling 
with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions 
of him best which have been often est tumbled about and 35 
handled. — On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumonf^ and 
Fletcher'^ but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to 
look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as 



200 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should 
prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a 
more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melan- 
choly. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that 
5 fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of 
the newest fashion to modern censure ? what hapless stationer 
could dream of Burton ever becoming popular ? — The wretched 
Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Strat- 
ford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old 

10 Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion de- 
picted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, 
hair, the very dress he used to wear — the only authentic testi- 
mony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and 
parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white 

15 paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwick- 
shire, I would have clapped both commentator and sexton fast 
in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble- 
tombs. 

20 Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the names of 
some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the 
ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shakspeare ? 
It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in 
common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a 

25 perfume in the mention, are. Kit Marlowe,° Drayton,° Drum- 
mond of Hawthornden,° and Cowley. 

Much depends upon lohen and ivliere you read a book. In the 
five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, 
who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, 

30 or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ? 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played 
before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, 
who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. 
Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of cere- 

35 mony the gentle Shakspeare enters.' At such a season, the 
Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to your- 
self, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More 
than one — and it degenerates into an audience. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS OK BOOKS AND READING 201 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for 
the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I 
could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels 
without extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank 5 
offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for 
one of the clerks — who is the best scholar — to commence upon 
the Times or the Chronicle and recite its entire contents aloud 
pro bono publico.^ With every advantage of lungs and elocu- 
tion, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and 10 
public-houses a fellow will get up, and spell out a paragraph, 
which he communicates as some discovery. Another follows 
with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length 
by piecemeal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without 
this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever 15 
travel through the contents of a whole paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one 
down without a feeling of disappointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, 
keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out 20 
incessantly, " The Chronicle is in hand, Sir." 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your supper — 
what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window- 
seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some 
former guest — two or three numbers of the old Town and 25 
Country Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-tete pictures — "The 
Royal Lover and Lady G— — ; " " The Melting Platonic and 
the old Beau," — and such-like antiquated scandal ? Would you 
exchange it — at that time, and in that place — for a better 
book ? 30 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much 
for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise Lost, or 
Comus, he could have read to him — but he missed the pleas- 
ure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light 
pamphlet. 35 

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some 
cathedral alone, and reading Candide. 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having 
been once detected — by a familiar damsel — reclined at my 



202 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera)° reading 
— Pamela.^ There was nothing in the book to make a man 
seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself 
down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I 
5 could have wished it had been — any other book. We read on 
very sociably for a few pages; and, not finding the author 
much to her taste, she got up, and — went away. Gentle 
casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for 
there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or 

10 the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the 
secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading, I cannot 
settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was 
generally to be seen upon Snow-Hill (as yet Skinner's Street 

l^was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, 
studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain 
of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he 
sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate 
encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would have 

20 quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have 
left me worse than indifferent to the five points. 

There is a class of street readers, whom I can never contem- 
plate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not having 
wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at 

25 the open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious 
looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have 
done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every 
moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable 
to deny themselves the gratification, they " snatch a fearful 

30 joy." ° Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got 

through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped 
his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger 
days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, 
that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a 

35 book wdth half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy 
snatches. A quaint poetess° of our day has moralised upon 
this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas : — 

I saw a boy with eager eye 
Open a book upon a stall, 



STAGE ILLUSION 203 



And read, as he'd devour it all ; 

Which, when the stall-man did espy, 

Soon to the boy I heard him call, 

'' You, Sir, you never buy a book, 

Therefore in one you shall not look." 5 

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 

He wish'd he never had been taught to read, 

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy. 10 

I soon perceived another boy, 

Who look'd as if he had not any 

Food, for that day at least — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 15 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



STAGE ILLUSION 

A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion to the 
scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion can in any 20 
case be perfect, is not the question. The nearest approach to 
it, we are told, is when the actor appears wholly unconscious of 
the presence of spectators. In tragedy — in all which is to 
affect the feelings — this undivided attention to his stage busi- 
ness seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with 25 
every day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while these references 
to an audience, in the shape of rant or sentiment, are not too 
frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for the 
purposes of dramatic interest may be said to be produced in 
spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, 30 
in certain characters in comedy, especially those which are a 
little extravagant, or which involve some notion repugnant to the 
moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in the comedian 
when, without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up 
a tacit understanding with them; and makes them, unconsciously 35 
to themselves, a party in the scene. The utmost nicety is re- 



204 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

quired in the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the 
great artists in the profession. 

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in 
ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. 
5 To see a coward done to the life upon a stage would produce any- 
thing but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister' s° 
cowards. Could anything be more agreeable, more pleasant? 
We loved the rogues. How was this effected but by the ex- 
quisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the 

10 spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was 
not half such a coward as we took him for ? We saw all the 
common symptoms of the malady upon him; the quivering lip, 
the cowering knees, the teeth chattering ; and could have sworn 
"that man was frightened." But we forgot all the while — of 

15 kept it almost a secret to ourselves — that he never 'once lost 
his self-possession ; that he let out by a thousand droll looks 
and gestures — meant at us, and not at all supposed to be visible 
to his fellows in the scene, that his confidence in his own re- 
sources had never once deserted him. Was this a genuine pic- 

20ture of a coward; or not rather a likeness, which the clever 
artist contrived to palm upon us instead of an original; while 
we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of greater 
pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, 
helplessness, and utter self -desertion, which we know to be con- 

25 comitants of cowardice in real life, could have given us ? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on 
the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of subrefer- 
ence, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a 
great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our compas- 

30 sion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money-bags 
and parchments ? By this subtle vent half of the hatefulness 
of the character — the self-closeness with which in real life it 
coils itself up from the sympathies of men — evaporates. The 
miser becomes sympathetic ; i.e. is no genuine miser. Here 

35 again a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable 
reality. 

Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old men, which 
produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon 
a stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, 



STAGE ILLUSION 205 

but in part from an inner conviction that they are being acted 
before us ; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing 
itself. They please by being done under the life, or beside it; 
not to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry in- 
deed ? or only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness 5 
to recognise, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of 
reality ? 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. 
It was tiie case with a late actor. Nothing could be more 
earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excel- 10 
lently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when 
he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the 
stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of every- 
thing before the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh 
and dissonant eftect. He was out of keeping with the rest of 15 
the dramatis personce. There was as little link between him 
and them, as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a 
third estate, — dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. Individually 
considered, his execution was masterly. But comedy is not 
this unbending thing; for this reason, that the same degree of 20 
credibility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The 
degrees of credibility demanded to the two things maybe illus- 
trated by the different sort of truth which w^e expect when a 
man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the 
former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. 25 
Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the 
teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are 
content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with • 
dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an 
audience naturalised behind the scenes, — taken in into the 30 
interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders, however. There 
is something ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof 
from all participation or concern with those who are come to 
be diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear 
but his own be told of it; but an old fool in farce may think he 35 
sees something, and by conscious words and looks express it, as 
plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an 
impertinent yi tragedy, an Osric,° for instance, breaks in upon 
the serious passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt 



206 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

with which he is treated. Bat when the pleasant impertinent 
of comedy, in a piece pnrely meant to give delight, and raise 
mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man 
with taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, 
5 the same sort of contempt expressed (however natural) would 
destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the 
intrusion comic, the actor w^ho plays the annoyed man must a 
little desert nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the 
audience, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevish- 

10 ness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In other 
words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the 
intruder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and more 
especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone w^hich in 
the world must necessarily provoke a duel, his real-life manner 

15 will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the 
other character (which to render it comic demands an antago- 
nist comicality on the part of the character opposed to it), and 
convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a 
downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no 

20 diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest 
upon any anw^orthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of 
his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his 
playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy. 

Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice to show 

23 that comic acting at least does not alw^ays demand from the 
performer that strict abstraction from all reference to an 
audience which is exacted of it ; but that in some cases a sort 
of compromise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic 
delight be attained by a judicious understanding, not too openly 

30 announced, between the ladies and gentlemen — on both sides 
of the curtain. 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTOI^ 

JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast 
thou flown ? to w^hat genial region are we permitted to conjec- 
ture that thou hast flitted? 
35 Art thou sowing thy w^ild oats yet (the harvest-time was 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLIS TON 207 

still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus ? or art 
thou enacting Rover (as we would giadlier think) by w^ander- 
ing Elysian streams? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics 
amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as the 5 
vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than a 
county gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof 
the five senses are the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be 
in a hurry to cast oft these gyves ; and had notice to quit, I fear, 
before thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. lO 
It was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices : thy 
Louvre, or thy White-Hall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now? or 
when may we expect thy aerial house-warming ? 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades ; 15 
now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the school- 
men° admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and unchrisom° 
babes) there may exist — not far perchance from that store- 
house of all vanities, which Milton saw in visions, — a Limbo 20 
somewhere for Players? and that 



Up thither like aerial vapours fly 

Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 

Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 

All the unaccomplish'd works of Authors' hands, 25 

Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mix'd, 

Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 

Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. — 

There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not improperly 
supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still 30 
be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? 
but Lessee still, and sfcill a Manager. 

In Green Kooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds 
thee wielding posthumous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes° (never plump on earth) circle 35 
thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fye on sinful Phantasy ! 

Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, 



208 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Robert William Elliston ! for as yet we know not thy new 
name in heaven. 

It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thoa 
shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian^ 
5 wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman,° paddling by the 
weedy wharf, with rancid'^ voice, bawling " Sculls, Sculls ! " 
to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou deignest 
no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, " No : Oars." 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference be- 

10 tween king and cobbler ; manager and call-boy ; and, if haply 

your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking 

your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) 

with the shade of some recently departed candle -snuffer. 

But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic 
15 robes, and private vanities ! what denudations to the bone, be- 
fore the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his 
battered lighter. 

Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and truncheon ; thy own 
coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property- 
20 man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's 
ermine; the coxcomb's wig; the snuff-box a la Foppington — 
all must overboard, he positively swears — and that ancient 
mariner brooks no denial ; for, since the tiresome monodrame° 
of the old Thracian Harper,° Charon, it is to be believed, hath 
25 shown small taste for theatricals. 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight ; pura et puta 
anima.° 

But, bless me, how little you look ! 

So shall we all look — kings, and keysars — stripped for the 
30 last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and thrice 
pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for many a heavy hour 
of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, public or 
domestic. 
35 Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving 
to his two brethren the heavy calendars, — honest Rhadamanth, 
always partial to players, weighing their particoloured existence 
here upon earth, — making account of the few foibles, that may 
have shaded thy real life, as we call it, (though, substantially, 



ELLISTONIANA 209 

scarcely less a vapour than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards 
of Drury), as but of so many echoes, natural re-percussions, and 
results to be expected from the assumed extravagancies of thy 
secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage — after a lenient 
castigation with rods lighter than of those Medusean ringlets, 5 
but just enough to '* whip the offending Adam out of thee " — 
shall courteously dismiss thee at the right hand gate — the o. p. 
side of Hades — that conducts to masques and merry-makings, 
in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.° 



ELLISTONIANA 

My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss w^e 10 
all deplore, was but slight. 

My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened into an 
acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a 
counter of the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered 
upon by a branch of his family. E., whom nothing misbecame 15 
— to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a going 
with a lustre — was serving in person two damsels fair, who 
had come into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new pub- 
lication, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious shop- 
man, hoping some conference. With what an air did he reach 20 
down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion upon the 
worth of the work in question, and launching out into a disser- 
tation on its comparative merits with those of certain publi- 
cations of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted customers 
fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sen- 25 
tence. So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shop- 
man. So Lovelace° sold his gloves in King Street. I admired 
the histrionic art, by which- he contrived to carry clean away 
every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so gener- 
ously submitted to ; and from that hour I judged him, with no 30 
after repentance, to be a person with whom it would be a feli- 
city to be more acquainted. 



210 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be super- 
fluous. With his blended private and professional habits alone 
I have to do; that harmonious fusion of the manners of the 
player into those of everyday life, which brought the stage 
5 boards into streets and dining-parlours, and kept up the play 
when the play was ended. — "I like Wrench," a friend was say- 
ing to him one day, " because he is the same natural, easy 
creature, on the stage, that he is offJ" " My case exactly," 
retorted Elliston — with a charming forgetfulness, that the 

10 converse of a proposition does not always lead to the same con- 
clusion — ''I am the same person off the stage that I am on." 
The inference, at first sight, seems identical ; but examine it a 
little, and it confesses only, that the one performer was never, 
and the other always, acting. 

15 And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deport- 
ment. You had spirited performance always going on before 
your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a monarch takes up 
his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel which he hon- 
ours by his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto° for that time a 

20 palace ; so wherever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there 
was the theatre. He carried about with 'him his pit, boxes, 
and galleries, and set up his portable play-house at corners of 
streets, and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pavements he 
trod the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to be passionate, 

25 the green baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath 
his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. 
So Apelles° alicays painted — in thought. So Gr. D. always 
poetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors — 
and some of them of Elliston's own stamp — who shall have 

30 agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, 
through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence ; 
but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter, but 
a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. They 
emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, ser- 

35 vants, etc. Another shall have been expanding your heart with 
generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with yearnings 
of universal sympathy ; you absolutely long to go home and do 
some good action. The play seems tedious, till you can get 
fairly out of the house, and realise your laudable intentions- 



ELLISTONIANA 211 

At length the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of 
all that is amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. 
Elliston was more of a piece. Did hQ play Ranger"^? and did 
Ranger fill the general bosom of the town with satisfaction? 
why should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordials 
satisfaction among his private circles? with Ms temperament, 
his animal spirits, his good nature, his follies perchance, could 
he do better than identify himself with his impersonation? 
Are we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and 
give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character, pre- lo 
sented to us in actual life ? or what would the performer have 
gained by divesting himself of the impersonation? Could the 
man Elliston have been essentially different from his part, even 
if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, in private circles, 
the airy briskness, the forwardness, the 'scape-goat trickeries 15 
of his prototype ? 

" But there is something not natural in this everlasting act- 
ing ; we want the real man." 

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom you 
cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious trappings, 20 
which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon him? 
What if it is the nature of some men to be highly artificial? 
The fault is least reprehensible in players. Gibber^ was his 
own Foppington, with almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could 
add to it. 25 

" My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson speaking of 
Lord Bacon, — '' was never increased towards him by his place 
or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for the greatness^ 
that was only proper to himself ; in that he seemed to me ever 
one of the greatest men, that had been in many ages. In his 30 
adversity I ever prayed that Heaven would give him strength ; 
for greatness he could not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely less conspicuous 
in the subject of these idle reminiscences than in my lord Yeru- 
1am. Those who have imagined that an unexpected elevation 35 
to the direction of a great London Theatre, affected the con- 
sequence of Elliston, or at all changed his nature, knew not the 
essential greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was 
my fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, 



212 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a 
shadow), on the morning of his election to that high office. 
Grasping my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered, 
— " Have you heard the news ? " — then with another look fol- 
5 lowing up the blow, he subjoined, — *' I am the future Manager 
of Drury Lane Theatre." — Breathless as he saw me, he stayed 
not for congratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leav- 
ing me to chew upon his new-blown dignities at leisure. In 
fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone could 

10 muse his praise. This was in his great style. 

But was he less great, (be witness, O ye Powers of Equa- 
nimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular 
exile,^ and more recently transmuted for a more illustrious 
exile,'^ the barren constableship of Elba into an image of Im- 

ISperial France), when, in melancholy after-years, again, much 
near the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had been 
wrested from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to the 
petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the small Olym- 
pic, his Elba f He still played nightly upon the boards of 

20 Drury, but in parts alas! allotted to him, not magnificently 
distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and 
magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in 
the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more 
lofty intellectual pretensions, " Have you heard " (his customary 

25 exordium) — " Have you heard," said he, '' how they treat me ? 
they put me in comedy.'' Thought I — but his finger on his 
lips forbade any verbal interruption — " where could they have 
put you better ? " Then, after a pause — " Where I formerly 
played Bomeo,° I now play Mercutio,° " — and so again he 

30 stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses. 

O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C ,° the best of 

story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost 
as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it — that 
I was a witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once been 

35 green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition 
from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic 
Hill was his " highest heaven " ; himself ^' Jove in his chair." 
There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of 
prompter, was brought for judgment — how shall I describe 



ELLISTOmANA 213 

her ? — one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of 
choruses — a probationer for the town, in either of its senses — 
the pertest little drab — a dirty fringe and appendage of the 
lamps' smoke — who, it seems, on some disapprobation ex- 
pressed by a " highly respectable " audience, had precipitately 5 
quitted her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small 
talents in disgust. 

" And how dare you," said her Manager, — assuming a cen- 
sorial severity, which would have crushed the confidence of a 
Vestris,° and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of her pro- 10 
fessional caprices — I verily believe, he thought her standing 
before him — " how dare you, Madam, withdraw yourself, with- 
out a notice, from your theatrical duties ? " ^' I was hissed. 
Sir." " And you have the presumption to decide upon the 
taste of the town ? '' " I don't know that. Sir, but I will never 15 
stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder of young Confidence — 
when gathering up his features into one significant mass of 
w^onder, pity, and expostulatory indignation — in a lesson never 
to have been lost upon a creature less forward than she who 
stood before him — his words were these : '•' They have hissed 20 
mer 

' Twas the identical argument a fortiori, which the son of 
Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance,° to persuade 
him to take his destiny with a good grace. " I too am mortal." 
And it is to be believed that in both cases the rhetoric missed 25 
of its application, for want of a proper understanding with the 
faculties of the respective recipients. 

^' Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously 
conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last 
retreat, and recess, of his every-day -waning grandeur. 30 

Those who knew EUiston, will know the manner in which he 
pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am about to 
record. One proud day to me he took his roast mutton with us 
in the Temple, to which I had superadded a preliminary had- 
dock. After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre ban- 35 
quet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made 
a sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing that for 
my own part 1 never ate but of one dish at dinner. ^' I too 
never eat but one thing at dinner," — was his reply — then after 



214 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

a pause — '' reckoning fish as nothing." The manner was all. 
It was as if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the 
annihilation of all the savoury esculents, which the pleasant 
and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans 
5 from her watery bosom. This was greatness, tempered with 
considerate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcom- 
ing entertainer. 

Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston ! and 
7wt lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which says that 

10 thoa didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose under 
no inscription but one of pure Latinity. Classical was thy bring- 
ing up ! and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, 
connecting the man with the boy, took thee back to thy latest 
exercise of imagination, to the days when, undreaming of 

15 Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early 
ripe one, under the roofs builded by the munificent and pious 
Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall 
silence this crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so 
20before)° at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my 
choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbour- 
hood of Henley affords in abundance, on the banks of my be- 
loved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives to 
wheedle me once in three or four seasons to a watering-place. 
25 Old attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have 
been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, 
dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment doing 
dreary penance at — Hastings! — and all because we were 
happy many years ago for a brief week at — Margate. That 
30 was our first sea-side experiment, and many circumstances com- 
bined to make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We 
had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from 
home so long together in company. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 215 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather- 
beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations — ill 
changed for the foppeiy and fresh-water niceness of the modern 
steam-packet? To the winds and waves thou committedst thy 
goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes, and 5 
spells, and boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven thou 
w^entest swdmmingiy ; or, w^hen it was their pleasure, stoodest 
still w4th sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not 
forced, as in a hotbed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of 
ocean with sulphureous smoke — a great sea chimsera, chimney- 10 
ing and furnacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching 
up Scamander.° 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluc- 
tant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like contempt) 
to the raw questions, w^hich we of the great city would be ever 15 
and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange 
naval implement? 'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy 
medium, thou shade of refuge between us and them, conciliat- 
ing interpreter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable am- 
bassador between sea and land ! — whose sailor-trousers did not 20 
more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the 
former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, with 
thy neat-fingered practice in thy culinar}^ vocation, bespoke thee" 
to have been of inland nurture heretofore — a master cook of 
Eastcheap ? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occu- 25 
pation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain; here, there, like 
another Ariel,° flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet 
with kindlier ministrations — not to assist the tempest, but, as 
if touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the 
qualms which that untried motion might haply raise in our 30 
crude land-fancies. And when the o'erwashing billows drove 
us below deck (for it was far gone in October, and we had stiff 
and blowing weather), how did thy officious ministerings, still 
catering for our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more 
cordial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confine- 35 
ment of thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very invit- 
ing, little cabin ! 

\Vith these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow- 
passenger, whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a longer 



216 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

voyage than we meditated, and have made mirth and wonder 
abound as far as the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish-com- 
plexioned young man, remarkably handsome, with an officer-like 
assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He 

5 was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. 
He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a most pain- 
ful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and 
only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a time 
— the nibbling pickpockets of your patience — but one who 

10 committed downright, daylight depredations upon his neigh- 
bour's faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but 
was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once into the 
depths of your credulity. I partly believe, he made pretty sure 
of his company. N'ot many rich, not many wise, or learned, 

15 composed at that time the common stowage of a Margate 
packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned Lon- 
doners (let our enemies give it a worse name) as Alderman- 
bury, or Watling-street, at that time of day could have supplied. 
There might be an exception or two among us, but I scorn to 

20 make any invidious distinctions among such a jolly, compan- 
ionable ship's company as those were whom I sailed with. 
Something too must be conceded to the Genius Loci° Had the 
confident fellow told us half the legends on land which he 
favoured us with on the other element, I flatter myself the good 

25 sense of most of us would have revolted. But we were in a new 
world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and the time and 
place disposed us to the reception of any prodigious marvel 
whatsoever. Time has obliterated from my memory much of 
his wild fablings; and the rest would appear but dull, as 

30 written, and to be read on shore. He had been Aide-de-camp 
(among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, 
and at one blow had stricken off the head of the King of Cari- 
mania on horseback. He, of course, married the Prince's 
daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of that 

35 court, combining with the loss of his consort, was the reason of 
his quitting Persia ; but, with the rapidity of a magician, he 
transported himself, along with his hearers, back to England, 
where we still found him in the confidence of great ladies. 
There was some story of a Princess — Elizabeth, if I remember 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 217 

— having intrusted to his care an extraordinary casket of jewels, 
upon some extraordinary occasion — but as I am not certain of 
the name or circumstance at this distance of time, I must leave 
it to the Royal daughters of England to settle the honour 
among themselves in private. I cannot call to mind half his 5 
pleasant wonders; but I perfectly remember that, in the course 
of his travels, he had seen a phoenix; and he obligingly unde- 
ceived us of the vulgar error, that there is but one of that species 
at a time, assuring us that they were not uncommon in some 
parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most im- 10 
plicit listeners. His dreaming fancies had transported us be- 
yond the " ignorant present.^" But when (still hardying more 
and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) he went on to 
affirm that he had actually sailed through the legs of the Colos- 
sus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to make a stand. And 15 
here I must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one 
of our party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his most 
deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold 
to assure the gentleman, that there mast be some mistake, 
as " the Colossus in question had been destroyed long since ; " 20 
to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was 
obliging enough to concede thus much, that ''the figure was 
indeed a little damaged." This was the only opposition he met 
with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded 
with his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with 25 
still more complacency than ever, — confirmed, as it were, by 
the extreme candour of that concession. With these prodigies 
he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the Reculvers,'' which 
one of our own company (having been the voyage before) im- 
mediately recognizing, and pointing out to us, was considered 30 
by us as no ordinary seaman. 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a different 
character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, and 
very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile ; and, 
if he caught now and then some snatches of these wild legends, 35 
it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern him. The 
waves to him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one 
being with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring 
without stirring ; and when some of us pulled out our private 



218 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

stores — our cold meat and our salads — he produced none, and 
seemed to want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had laid in ; 
provision for the one or two days and nights, to which these 
vessels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. 
5 Upon a nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed neither 
to court nor decline, we learned that he was going to Margate, 
with the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there for 
sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, which appeared to 
have eaten all over him. He expressed great hopes of a cure ; 

10 and when we asked him whether he had any friends where he 
was going, he replied, " he had no friends." 

These pleasant, and some mournful passages, with the first 
sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense of holi- 
days, and out-of-door adventure, to me that had been pent up 

15 in populous cities^ for many months before, — have left upon 
my mind the fragrance as of summer days gone by, bequeathing 
nothing but their remembrance for cold and wintry hours to 
chew upon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some unwelcome 

20 comparisons) if I endeavour to account for the dissatisfaction 
which I have heard so many persons confess to have felt (as I 
did myself feel in part on this occasion), at the sight of the sea 
for the first time? I think the reason usually given — referring 
to the incapacity of actual objects for satisfying our precon- 

25 ceptions of them — scarcely goes deep enough into the question. 
Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, a niountain for the 
first time in his life, and he shall perhaps feel himself a little 
mortified. The things do not fill up that space which the idea 
of them seemed to take up in his mind. But they have still a 

30 correspondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so 
as to produce a very similar impression: enlarging themselves 
(if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea remains a 
disappointment. Is it not, that in the latter we had expected to 
behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of 

35 imagination, unavoidably) not a definite object, as those wild 
beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, but all the sea 
at once, the commensurate antagonist of the earth? 
I do not say we tell ourselves so much, but the craving of the 
mind is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will suppose the 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 219 

case of a young person of fifteen (as I then was) knowing 
nothing of the sea, but from description. He comes to it for 
the first time — all that he has been reading of it all his life, 
and that the most enthusiastic part of life, — all he has gathered 
from narratives of wandering seamen, — what he has gained 5 
from true voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from 
romance and poetry; — crowding their images, and exacting 
strange tributes from expectation. — He thinks of the great 
deep, and of those who go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, 
and of the vast continents it washes ; of its receiving the 10 
mighty Plata, or Orellana,° into its bosom, without disturbance, 
or sense of augmentation; of Biscay swells, and the mariner 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; 

of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Bermoothes° ; " of great 15 
whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, and sumless 
treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring depths ; of fishes and 
quaint monsters, to which all that is terrible on earth 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 

Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 20 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, and shells ; 
of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mermaids' grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be shown 
all these wonders at once, but he is under the tyranny of a 
mighty faculty, which haunts him with confused hints and 25 
shadows of all these ; and when the actual object opens first 
upon him, seen (in tame weather too most likely) from our 
unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea-water, as it shows to 
him — what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and even 
diminutive entertainment ? Or if he has come to it from the 30 
mouth of a river, was it much more than the river widening? 
and, even out of sight of land, what had he but a flat watery 
horizon about him, nothing comparable to the vast o'er 
curtaining sky, his familiar object, seen daily without dread or 
amazement? — Who, in similar circumstances, has not been 35 
tempted to exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir,^ 

Is tills the mighty ocean ? — is this all 9 



220 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque Port is 
neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their 
starved foliage from between the horrid fissures of dusty in- 
nutritious rocks ; w- hich the amateur calls " verdure to the edge 
5 of the sea." I require woods, and they show me stunted 
coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and pant for fresh 
streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the 
naked beach, watching the capricious hues of the sea, shifting- 
like the colours of dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at 

10 the windows of this island-prison. I would fain retire into the 
interior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be 
on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains, as of iron. 
My thoughts are abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. 
There is no home for me here. There is no sense of home at 

15 Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, an heterogeneous 
assemblage of sea-mews and stockbrokers, Amphitrites° of the 
town, and misses that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what 
it was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to have 
remained, a fair, honest fishing-town, and no more, it w^ere some- 

20 thing — with a few straggling fishermen's huts scattered about, 
artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched from them, 
it were something. I could abide to dwell with Meshech ; to 
assort with fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, or I dream 
there are, many of this latter occupation here. Their faces 

25 become the place. I like a smuggler. He is the only honest 
thief. He robs nothing but the revenue — an abstraction I 
never greatly cared about. I could go out with them in 
their mackerel boats, or about their less ostensible business, 
with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor victims 

30 to monotony, who from day to day pace along the beach, in 
endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit country- 
men — townsfolk or brethren perchance — whistling to the 
sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their only solace), 
who, under the mild name of preventive service, keep up a 

35 legitimated civil warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign 
one, to show their detestation of run hollands, and zeal for Old 
England. But it is the visitants from town, that come here 
to say that they have been here, with no more relish of the sea 
than a pond-perch or a dace might be supposed to have, that 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 221 

are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and 
have as little toleration for myself here as for them. What can 
they want here? If they had a true relish of the ocean, why 
have they brought all this land luggage with them? or why 
pitch their civilized tents in the desert? What mean these 5 
scanty book-rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them — 
if the sea were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read 
strange matter in° " ? what are their foolish concert-rooms, if 
they come, as they would fain be thought to do, to listen to the 
music of the waves ? All is false and hollow pretension. They lo 
come because it is the fashion, and to spoil the nature of the 
place. They are mostly, as I have said, stock-brokers ; but I have 
watched the better sort of them — now and then, an honest citizen 
(of the old stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down 
his wife and daughters to taste the sea breezes. I always know the 15 
date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenance. 
A day or two they go wandering on the shingles, picking up 
cockle-shells, and thinking them great things ; but, in a poor 
week, imagination slackens : they begin to discover that 
cockles produce no pearls, and then — O then ! if I could inter- 20 
pret for the pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage 
to confess it themselves), how gladly would they exchange their 
seaside rambles for a Sunday walk on the green-sward of their 
accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

I would ask one of these sea-charmed emigrants, who think 25 
they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what would their 
feelings be if some of the unsophisticated aborigines of this 
place, encouraged by their courteous questionings here-, should 
venture, on the faith of such assured sympathy between them, 
to return the visit, and come up to see — London. I must 30 
imagine them with their fishing-tackle on their back, as we 
carry our town necessaries. What a sensation would it cause 
in Lothbury! What vehement laughter would it not excite 
among 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street. 35 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects can feel 
their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, 
where she does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids 



222 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

us stay at borne. The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I 
am not half so good-natured as by the milder waters of my 
natural river. I would exchange these sea-gulls for swans, 
and scud a swallow for ever about the banks of Thamesis. 



THE CONVALESCENT 

5 A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the name 
of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for some weeks 
past, and is but slowly leaving me, has reduced me to an in- 
capacity of reflecting upon any topic foreign to itself. Expect 
no healthy conclusions from me this month, Reader ; I can offer 
10 you only sick men's dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for what else 
is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw 
daylight curtains about him ; and, shutting out the sun, to 
induce a total oblivion of all the works which are going on 
15 under it ? To become insensible to all the operations of life, 
except the beatings of one feeble pulse ? 

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient 
lords it there ; what caprices he acts without control ! how king- 
like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, 
20 and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it, to 
the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. 

He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies full 

length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet 

quite across the bed; and none accuses him of tergiversation. 

25 Within the four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare 

Clausum.° 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to him- 
self ! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is 
inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two Tables 
30 of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get 
well. What passes out of doors, or within them, so he hear not 
the jarring of them, affects him not. 

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event of a 



THE CONVALESCENT 223 

lawsuit, which was to be the making or the marring of his 
dearest friend. He was to be seen trudging about upon this 
man's errand to fifty quarters of the town at once, jogging 
this witness, refreshing that solicitor. The cause was to come 
on yesterday. He is absolutely as indifferent to the decision as 5 
if it were a question to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure from 
some whispering, going on about the house, not intended for 
his hearing, he picks up enough to make him understand that 
things went cross-grained in the Court yesterday, and his friend 
is ruined. But the word ''friend," and the word "ruin," dis- 10 
turb him no more than so much jargon. He is not to think of 
anything but how to get better. 

What a world of foreign cares are merged in that absorbing 
consideration ! 

He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is wrapped 15 
in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his sympatb}^, like 
some curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, for his own 
use only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to himself; he 
yearneth over himself ; his bowels are even melted within him, 20 
to think what he suffers ; he is not ashamed to weep over 
himself. 

He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself; 
studying little stratagems and artificial alleviations. 

He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by an allow- 25 
able fiction, into as many distinct individuals as he hath sore 
and sorrowing members. Sometimes he meditates — as of a 
thing apart from him — upon his poor aching head, and that 
dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay in it all the past night 
like a log, or palpable substance of pain, not to be removed 30 
without opening the very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. 
Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He compas- 
sionates himself all over ; and his bed is a very discipline of 
humanity, and tender heart. 

He is his own sympathizer; and instinctively feels that none 35 
can so well perform that office for him. He cares for few spec- 
tators to his tragedy. Only that punctual face of the old nurse 
pleases him, that announces his broths and his cordials. He 
likes it because it is so unmoved, and because he can pour forth 



224 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

his feverish ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to his 
bed-post. 

To the world's business he is dead. He understands not 
what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; only he has 
5 a glimmering conceit of some such thing, when the doctor 
makes his daily call ; and even in the lines of that busy face he 
reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely conceives of him- 
self as the sick man. To what other uneasy couch the good 
man is hastening, when he slips out of his chamber, folding up 

10 his thin douceur so carefully for fear of rustling — is no specu- 
lation which he can at present entertain. He thinks only of 
the regular return of the same phenomenon at the same hour 
to-morrow. 

Household rumours touch him not. Some faint murmur, 

15 indicative of life going on within the house, soothes him, while 
he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not to know any- 
thing, not to think of anything. Servants gliding up and down 
the distant staircase, treading as upon velvet, gently keep his 
ear awake, so long as he troubles not himself further than with 

20 some feeble guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge would 
be a burthen to him : he can just endure the pressure of con- 
jecture. He opens his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the 
muffled knocker, and closes it again without asking '' Who was 
it ? " He is flattered by a general notion that inquiries are 

25 making after him, bat he cares not to know the name of the 
inquirer. In the general stillness, and awful hush of the house, 
he lies in state and feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Compare 
the silent tread and quiet ministry, almost by the eye only, 

30 with which he is served — with the careless demeanour, the un- 
ceremonious goings in and out (slapping of doors, or leaving 
them open) of the very same attendants, when he is getting a 
little better — and you will confess, that from the bed of sick- 
ness (throne let me rather call it) to the elbow-chair of conva- 

35 lescence, is a fall from dignity, amounting to a deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature I 
where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, 
in the family's eye ? 

The scene of his regalities, his sick room, which was his presh 



THE CONVALESCENT 225 

ence-ch amber, where he lay and acted his despotic fancies — 
how is it reduced to a common bedroom ! The trimness of the 
very bed has something petty and unmeaning about it. It is 
made every day. How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed, 
oceanic surface, which it presented so short a time since, when 5 
to make it was a service not to be thought of at often er than 
three or four day revolutions, when the patient was with pain 
and grief to be lifted for a little while out of it, to submit to 
the encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and decencies which 
his shaken frame deprecated ; then to be lifted into it again, 10 
for another three or four days respite, to flounder it out of 
shape again, while every fresh furrow was an historical record 
of some shifting posture, some uneasy turning,- some seeking 
for a little ease ; and the shrunken skin scarce told a truer 
story than the crumpled coverlid. 15 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans — so much 
more awful, while we knew not from what caverns of vast 
hidden suffering they proceeded. The Lernean° pangs are 
quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved ; and Philoctetes° is 
become an ordinary personage. 20 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greatness sur- 
vives in the still lingering visitations of the medical attendant. 
But how is he, too, changed with everything else ! Can this 
be he — this man of news — of chat — of anecdote — of every- 
thing but physic — can this be he, who so lately came between 25 
the patient and his cruel enemy, as on some solemn embassy 
from Nature, erecting herself into a high mediating party? 

— Pshaw ! 'tis some old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous — the 
spell that hushed the household — the desert-like stillness, felt 30 
throughout its inmost chambers — the mute attendance — the 
inquiry by looks — the still softer delicacies of self-attention — 
the sole and single eye of distemper alonely fixed upon itself 

— world-thoughts excluded — the man a world unto himself — 
his own theatre — 35 

What a speck is he dwindled into ! 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of sick- 
ness, yet far enough from the terra-firma of established health, 
Q 



226 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting — an article. 
In Articulo Mortis,° thought I; but it is something hard — and 
the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me. The summons, 
unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to link me on again to the 
5 petty businesses of life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle call 
to activity^ however trivial ; a wholesome weaning from that 
preposterous dream of self-absorption — the puffy state of sick- 
ness — in which I confess to have lain so long, insensible to the 
magazines and monarchies of the world alike ; to its laws, and 

10 to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the 
acres, which in imagination I had spread over — for the sick 
man swells in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, 
till he become^ a Tityus° to himself — are wasting to a span ; 
and for the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you 

15 have me once again in my natural pretensions — the lean and 
meagre figure of your insignificant Essayist.^ 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

So far from the position holding true, that great wit (op 
genius, in our modern way of speaking), has a necessary 
alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will 
20 ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the 
mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, 
by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood, 
manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. 
Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one 
25 of them. " So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical 
friend, 

" did Nature to him frame, 

As all things but his judgment overcame ; 
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 
30 Tempering that mighty sea below." 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the 
raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which 
they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 227 

spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state 
of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams 
being awake. He is not possessed by his subject, but has 
dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as 
in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is 5 
not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl without dismay; 
he wins his flight without self-loss through realms of chaos 
" and old night." ° Or if, abandoning himself to that severer 
chaos of a " human mind untuned," he is content awhile to be 
mad with Lear,° or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with 10 
Timon, neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, so un- 
checked, but that, — never letting the reins of reason wholly 
go, while most he seems to do so, — he has his better genius 
still w^hispering at his ear, with the good servant Kent sug- 
gesting saner counsels, or with the honest stew^ard Flavins 15 
recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most 
to recede from humanity, he will be found the truest to 
it. From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon possible 
existences, he subjugates them to the law^ of her consistency. 
He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even 20 
when he appears most to betray and desert her. His ideal 
tribes submit to policy ; his very monsters are tamed to his 
hand, even as that wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. ° He 
tames, and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, 
till they w^onder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to 25 
submit to European vesture. Caliban,^ the Witches,° are as 
true to the laws of their own nature (ours wdth a difference), as 
Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein the great and the little 
wits are differenced ; that if the latter wander ever so little 
from nature or actual existence, they lose themselves and their 30 
readers. Their phantoms are lawless ; their visions nightmares. 
They do not create, which implies shaping and consistency. 
Their imaginations are not active — for to be active is to call 
something into act and form — but passive, as men in sick 
dreams. For the super-natural, or something super-added to 35 
what we know of nature, they give you the plainly non-natural. 
And if this were all, and that these mental hallucinations were 
discoverable only in the treatment of subjects out of nature, or 
transcending it, the judgment might with som^e plea be par- 



228 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

doned if it ran riot, and a little wantonized : but even in the 
describing of real and everyday life, that which is before their 
eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate from nature — 
show more of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance 
5 with frenzy, — than a great genius in his " maddest fits," as 
Withers^ somewhere calls them. We appeal to any one that is 
acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels, — as they 
existed some twenty or thirty years back, — those scanty intel- 
lectual viands of the whole female reading public, till a happier 

10 genius arose, and expelled for ever the innutritions phantoms, 
— whether he has not found his brain more "betossed," his 
memory more puzzled, his sense of when and where more con- 
founded, among the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, 
the inconsistent characters, or no characters, of some third-rate 

15 love-intrigue — where the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour 
and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath 
and Bond-street — a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon 
him than he has felt wandering over all the fairy-grounds of 
Spenser. In the productions we refer to, nothing but names 

20 and places is familiar ; the persons are neither of this world 
nor of any other conceivable one ; an endless string of activities 
without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive : — we meet 
phantoms in our known walks ; fantasques only christened. In 
the poet we have names which announce fiction; and we have 

25 absolutely no place at all, for the things and persons of the 
Fairy Queen prate not of their " whereabout." But in their 
inner nature, and the law of their speech and actions, we are 
at home and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into 
a dream ; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of 

30 everyday occurrences. By what subtle art of tracing the niental 
processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to ex- 
plain, but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mammon, 
in which the Money God appears first in the lowest form of a 
miser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all 

35 the treasures of the w^orld; and has a daughter, Ambition, 
before whom all the world kneels for favours — with the 
Hesperian fruit,° the waters of Tantalus,^ wdth Pilate washing 
his hands vainly, but not impertinently, in the same stream — 
that we should be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder 



C APT Am JACKSON 229 

of treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops,° in a palace 
and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations of the 
most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake, 
and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof 
of that hidden sanity which still guides the poet in his wildest 5 
seeming-aberrations. 

It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the 
mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some sort — but what a 
copy I Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained 
all night with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent 10 
vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by his waking 
judgment. That which appeared so shifting, and yet so co- 
herent, while that faculty was passive, when it comes under 
cool examination shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, 
that we are ashamed to have been so deluded ; and to have 15 
taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a god. But the 
transitions in this episode are every whit as violent as in the 
most extravagant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies 
them. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON 

Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, I observe 20 
with concern " At his cottage on the Bath road. Captain Jack- 
son." The name and attribution are common enough ; but a 
feeling like reproach persuades me that this could have been no 
other in fact than my dear old friend, who some five-and- 
twenty years ago rented a tenement, which he was pleased to 25 
dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from 
Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns 
they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the sur- 
prise of some such sad memento as that which now lies before 
us! 30 

He whom I mean w^as a retired half-pay officer, with a wife 
and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the 
port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender professional 
allowance. Comely girls they were too. 



230 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

And was I in danger of forgetting this man? — his cheerful 
suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your 
foot in the cottage — the anxious ministerings about you, where 
little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. — Althea's 
5horn° in a poor platter — the power of self-enchantment, by 
which, in his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied 
his means to bounties. 

You saw Avith your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare 
scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — remnant hardly 

10 sufficient to send a mendicant from the door contented. But 
in the copious will — the revelling imagination of your host 
— the "mind, the mind, Master Shallow," whole beeves were 
spread before you — hecatombs — no end appeared to the pro- 
fusion. 

15 It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes; carving 
could not lessen, nor helping diminish it — the stamina were 
left — the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its 
accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed 

20 creature exclaim ; *' while we have, let us not want," " here is 
plenty left;" "want for nothing" — with many more such 
hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants 
of smoking boards, and feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding 
a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or 

25 the daughter's, he would convey the remanent rind into his 
own, with a merry quirk of "the nearer the bone," etc., and 
declaring that he universally preferred the outside. For we 
had our table distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in 
a njanner sate above the salt. JSTone but his guest or guests 

30 dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were 
vere hospitibus sacra° But of one thing or another there was 
always enough, and leavings : only he would sometimes finish 
the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occasions, 

35 spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind 
of ale I remember — " British beverage," he would say ! " Push 
about, my boys ; " " Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At 
every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the 
forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects want- 



CAPTAIN JACKSON 231 

ing. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of 
punch was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous Port 
or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corners. You 
got flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy upon words ; and 
reeled under the potency of his unperforming Bacchanalians 
encouragements. 

We had our songs — ^' Why, Soldiers, Why," — and the 
"British Grenadiers" — in which last we were all obliged to 
bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency was 
a nightly theme — the masters he had given them — the "no- 10 
expense " which he spared to accomplish them in a science " so 
necessary to young women." But then — they could not sing 
"without the instrument." 

Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated. Secrets of Poverty ! 
Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your makeshift 15 
efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken 
keys, if one of the bunch be extant ; thrummed by a thousand 
ancestral thumbs; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa! 
Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of 
her thinner warble ! A veil be spread over the dear delighted 20 
face of the well-deluded father, who. now haply listening to 
cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she 
awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings 
of that slender image of a voice. 

We were not without our literary talk either. It did not 25 
extend far, but as far as it went it was good. It w^as bottomed 
well ; had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a room, 
which tradition authenticated to have been the same in which 
Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned the greater 
part of his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted, 30 
though none of the present inmates, that I could discover, 
appeared ever to have met with the poem in question. But 
that was no matter. Glover had written there, and the anec- 
dote was pressed into the account of the family importance. It 
diffused a learned air through the apartment, the little side 35 
casement of which (the poet's study window), opening upon 
a superb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over do- 
mains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard 
whereof our host could call his own, yet gave occasion to 



232 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call it ? — in 
his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer evening. 
It was all his, he took it all in, and communicated rich 
portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his 
5 hospitality ; it was going over his grounds ; he was lord for 
the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers- up to 
his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes — you 
had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say, '' Hand 

10 me the silver sugar-tongs ; " and before you could discover it 
was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and 
captivate your imagination by a misnomer of "the urn" for 
a tea-kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men 
direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he 

15 neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that 
everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a 
demur what you did, or did not see, at the cottage. With noth- 
ing to live on, he seemed to live on everything. He had a stock 
of wealth in his mind ; not that which is properly termed 

20 Content, for in truth he was not to be contained at all, but over- 
flowed all bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober native of 
North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, 
was not proof against the continual collision of his credulity. 

25 Her daughters w^ere rational and discreet young women ; in the 
main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circumstances. I 
have seen them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such 
was the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am per- 
suaded not for any half hour together did they ever look their 

30 own prospects fairly in the face. There was no resisting the 
vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination conjured 
up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them 
up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realized 
themselves ; for they both have married since, I am told, more 

35 than respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, 
or I should wish to convey some notion of the manner in which 
the pleasant creature described the circumstances of his own 
wedding-day. I faintly remember something of a chaise-and- 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 233 

four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that morning 
to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. 
It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad — 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 
We were a comely sight to see ; 5 

My love was clad in hlack velvet. 
And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon w^hich his own actual 
splendour at all corresponded with the world's notions on that 
subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever 10 
humble vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous 
days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not 
as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to 
that one day's state. It seemed an " equipage etern " from 
which no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power 15 
thereafter to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon in- 
digent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense 
of them before strangers, may not be always discommendable. 
Tibbs,° and Bobadil,^ even when detected, have more of our 20 
admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat 
upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in 
poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep 
in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mastery 
over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain 25 
Jackson. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

Sera taraen respexit 
Libertas. Virgil. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefe. 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the 30 
golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irksome 
confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days prolonged 
through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, with- 



234 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



I 



out hope of release or respite ; to have lived to forget that there 
are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the 
prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, will you be able 
to appreciate my deliverance. 

5 It is now six and thirty years since I took my seat at the 
desk in Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at four- 
teen from the abundant playtime, and the frequently-interven- 
ing vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes 
ten hours a day attendance at the counting-house. But time 

10 partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content 

— doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admi- 
rable as the institution of them is for purposes of worship, are 
for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbend- 
ISing and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me 
attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss 
the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers 

— the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal 
bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, 

20 all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, 
and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a 
weekday saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis 
so delightful — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle 
over — no busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates 

25 them ever passing by — the very face of business a charm by 
contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be 
seen but unhappy countenances — or half -happy at best — of 
emancipated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and 
there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving 

30 all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of en- 
joying a free hour; and livelily expressing the hollowness of a 
day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day 
look anything but comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at 

35 Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself 
in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great in- 
dulgence ; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone 
kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. 
But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom of 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 235 

the distance keep touch with me? or rather was it not a series 
of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and 
a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them ? 
Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before 1 had 
a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, count- 5 
ing upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before 
such another snatch would come. Still the prospect of its 
coming threw something of an illumination upon the darker 
side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could 
scarcely have sustained my thraldom. 10 

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been 
haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for 
business. This, during my latter years, had increased to such a 
degree, that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. 
My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a 15 
dread of some crisis, to which I should be found unequal. Be- 
sides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my 
sleep, and would awake with terrors* of imaginary false entries, 
errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, 
and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown 20 
to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the 
trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know that it 
had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 

5th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L , 25 

the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly 
taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of 
them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, 
and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to 
resign his service. He spoke some words of course to hearten 30 
me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I remained 
labouring under the impression that I had acted imprudently 
in my disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle against 
myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week 
passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in 35 
my whole life, when on the evening of the 12th of April, just as 
I was about quitting my desk to go home (it might be about 
eight o'clock), I received an awful summons to attend the pres- 
ence of the whole assembled firm in the formidable back par- 



236 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



ion 1 



lour. I thought, now my time is surely come, I have done 
myself, I am going to be told that they have no longer occasion 

for me. L , I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which 

was a little relief to me, — when to my utter astonishment 

5 B , the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on 

the length of my services, my very meritorious conduct during 
the whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out 
that? I protest I never had the confidence to think as much). 
He went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain 

10 time of life (how my heart panted !) and asking me a few ques- 
tions as to the amount of m}^ own property, of which I have a 
little, ended with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded 
a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had 
served so well, a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of 

15 my accustomed salary — a magnificent offer! I do not know 
what I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was 
understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I 
was free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out 
a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home — for 

20 ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal 
their names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent 
firm in the world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bo- 
sanquet, and Lacy. 

Esto perpetuoP ! 

25 For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could 
only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused to taste it sin- 
cerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing 
that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old 
Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years confinement. I 

30 could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out 
of Time into Eternity— for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to 
have all his Time to himself. It seemed to me that I had more 
time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, 
poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I 

35 could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some steward, or 
judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And 
here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not 
lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 237 

customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. 
I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient ; 
and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a 
quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in 
no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If 6 
Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it aw^ay ; but I do not 
walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holi- 
days, thirty miles a day to make the most of them. If Time 
were troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do not read in 
that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but 10 
candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in 
bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when 
the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it come 
to me. I am like the man 

that's born, and has his years come to him, 15 



In some green desert. 

"Years!" you will say; "what is this superannuated simple- 
ton calculating upon? He has already told us he is past 
fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of 20 
them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to 
myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is 
the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, 
that which he has all to himself ; the rest, though in some sense 
he may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The 25 
remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied 
for me threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will 
be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three 
sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the com- 30 
mencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet 
gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened since I 
quitted the Counting-House. I could not conceive of it as an 
affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks, with whom I 
had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the 35 
year, been closely associated — being suddenly removed from 
them — they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, 



238 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir 
Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death : 

'Twas but just now he went away ; 



I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
5 And yet the distance does the same appear 

As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go 
among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-fellows 

10 — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left below in the 
state militant. ]^ot all the kindness with w^hich they received 
me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, w^hich I 
had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our 
old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old 

15 desk ; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to an- 
other. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. 

D 1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if I 

had not, — at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of 
my toils for six and thirty years, that soothed for me with their 

20 jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. 
Had it been so rugged then after all ? or was I a coward simply ? 
Well, it is too late to repent; and I also know that these sug- 
gestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. 
But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands be- 

25 twixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time 
before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old 
cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come among 

ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, 

and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! 

30 PI , officious to do, and to volunteer, good services ! — and 

thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham° or a Whitting- 
ton° of old, stately House of Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine 
passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for 
one half the year supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy 

35 contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! 
In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wan- 
dering bookseller, my '' works ! " There let them rest, as I do 
from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 239 

folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful ! My mantle I 
bequeath among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communica- 
tion. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had 
not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was compara- 5 
tive only. Something of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling 
sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. 
I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some 
necessary part of my apparel. 1 was a poor Carthusian, from 
strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned 10 
upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than 
my own master. It is natural for me to go where I please, to 
do what I please. I find myself at 11 o'clock in the day in 
Bond-street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering 
there at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to 15 
explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years a col- 
lector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself 
before a fine picture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise ? 
What is become of Fish-street Hill? Where is Fenchurch- 
street ? Stones of old Mincing-lane, which I have w^orn with 20 
my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the footsteps 
of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal? 
I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I 
am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole 
when I ventured to compare the change in my condition to 25 
passing into another world. Time stands still in a manner to 
me. I have lost all distinction of season. I do not know the 
day of the week, or of the month. Each day used to be indi- 
vidually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days ; in 
its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had 30 
my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. The 
genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the whole of 
it, affecting my appetite, spirits, etc. The phantom of the next 
day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my 
poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has w^ashed that 35 
Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days 
are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a 
holy day as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugi- 
tiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure 



240 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

out of it — is melted down into a week-day. I can spare to go 
to church now, without grudging the huge cantle° which it used 
to seem to cut out of the holiday. I have time for everything. 
I can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much 
5 occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an 
invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine 
May-morning. It is Lucretian° pleasure to behold the poor 
drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and 
caring ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal 

10 round — and what is it all for? A man can never have too 
much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, 
I would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. 
Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is 
operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will 

15 no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those accursed cot- 
ton-mills ? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it 
down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer ******, clerk to the Firm of, &c. I am 
20 Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in tiim gardens.^ I am 
already come to be known by my vacant face and careless 
gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled 
purpose. I walk about; not to and from. They tell me, a 
certain cum dignitate° air, that has been buried so long with my 
25 other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I 
grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, 
it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operaium est.^ I have 
done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task- 
work, and have the rest of the day to myself. 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING 

30 It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury^ and 
Sir William Temple,° are models of the genteel style in writing. 
We should prefer saying — of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. 
Nothing can be more unlike than the inflated finical rhap- 



THE GENTEEL STYLE OF WBITING 241 

sodiesof Shaftesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of Temple. 
The man of rank is discernible in both writers ; but in the one 
it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out of- 
fensively. The peer seems to have written with his coronet on, 
and his Earl's mantle before him ; the commoner in his elbow- 5 
chair and undress. — What can be more pleasant than the way 
in which the retired statesman peeps out in the essays, penned 
by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene ? They scent of 
Nimeguen, and the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted 
under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a " Portugal lo 
Envoy in England," tells him it was frequent in his country for 
men, spent with age or other decays, so as they could not hope 
for above a year or two of life, to ship themselves away in a 
Brazil fleet, and after their arrival there to go on a great length, 
sometimes of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the force of 15 
that vigour they recovered with that remove. " Whether such 
an effect (Temple beautifully adds) might grow from the air, 
or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the- sun, 
which is the fountain of light and heat, when their natural heat 
was so far decayed ; or whether the piecing out of an old man's 20 
life were worth the pains ; I cannot tell : perhaps the play is 
not worth the candle." — Monsieur Pompone, " French Ambas- 
sador in his (Sir William's) time at the Hague," certifies him, 
that in his life he had never heard of any man in France that 
arrived at a hundred years of age ; a limitation of life which the 25 
old gentleman imputes to the excellence of their climate, giving 
them such a liveliness of temper and humour, as disposes them 
to more pleasures of all kinds than in other countries ; and 
moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. The "late Robert 
Earl of Leicester " furnishes him with a story of a Countess of 30 
Desmond, married out of England in Edward the Fourth's time, 
and who lived far in King James's reign. The " same noble 
person " gives him an account, how such a year, in the same 
reign, there went about the country a set of morrice-dancers,° 
composed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian,^ and a tabor 35 
and pipe; and how these twelve, one with another, made up 
twelve hundred years. " It was not so much (says Temple) 
that so many in one small county (Hertfordshire) should live 
to that age, as that they should be in vigour and in humour to 



242 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

travel and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " col- 
leagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout ; 
which is confirmed by another " Envoy," Monsieur Serin- 
champs, in that town, who had tried it. — Old Prince Maurice 
5 of Nassau recommends to him the use of hammocks in that 
complaint; having been allured to sleep, while suffering under 
it himself, by the "constant motion or swinging of those airy 
beds." Count Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who "was killed 
last summer before Maestricht," impart to him their expe- 

10 riences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more innocently disclosed, 
than where he takes for granted the compliments paid by for- 
eigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfection of what 
we esteem the best, he can truly say, that the French, who have 

15 eaten his peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, 
have generally concluded that the last are as good as any they 
have eaten in France on this side Fontainebleau; and the first 
as good as any they have eat in Gascony. Italians have agreed 
his white figs to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which 

20 is the earlier kind of white fig there ; for in the later kind and 
the blue, we cannot come near the warm climates, no more than 
in the Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees, too, are 
as large as any he saw when he was young in France, except 
those of Fontainebleau, or what he has seen since in the Low 

25 Countries ; except some very old ones of the Prince of 
Orange's. Of grapes he had the honour of bringing over four 
sorts into England, which he enumerates, and supposes that 
they are all by this time pretty common among some gardeners 
in his neighbourhood, as well as several persons of quality; for 

30 he ever thought all things of this kind " the commoner they are 
made the better." The garden pedantry with which he asserts 
that 'tis to little purpose to plant any of the best fruits, as 
peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamptonshire 
at the furthest northwards ; and praises the " Bishop of Munster 

35 at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that 
cold climate ; is equally pleasant and in character. " I may 
perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay with a pas- 
sage worthy of Cowley) "be allowed to know something of 
this trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be good for 



THE GENTEEL STYLE OF WRITING 243 

nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens, 
without often looking abroad to see how other matters play, 
what motions in the state, and what invitations they may hope 
for into other scenes. For my ow^n part, as the country life, and 
this part of it more particularly, were the inclination of my 5 
youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age; and I can 
truly say that, among many great employments that have fallen 
to m}^ share, I have never asked or sought for any of them, but 
have often endeavoured to escape from them, into the ease and 
freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way 10 
and his own pace in the common paths and circles of life. 
The measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what he 
has chosen, which I thank God has befallen me ; and though 
among the follies of my life, building and planting have not 
been the least, and have cost me more than I have the confi-15 
dence to ow^n ; yet they have been fully recompensed by the 
sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my reso- 
lution taken of never entering again into any public employ- 
ments, I have passed five years without ever once going to 
town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there 20 
always ready to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of 
affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of desire 
or humour to make so small a remove ; for when I am in this 
corner, I can truly say with Horace, Me quoties rejicit, etc. 

*' ' Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives, 25 

What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
May I have books enough ; and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 30 

This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.' " 

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy copy. 
On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordinate 
to nature and tenderness, has seduced him into a string of 35 
felicitous antitheses; which, it is obvious to remark, have been 
a model to Addison and succeeding essayists. " Who would 
not be covetous, and with reason," he says, " if health could be 



244 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

purchased with gold? who not ambitious, if it were at the 
command of power, or restored by honour ? but, alas ! a white 
sta:ff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common 
cane ; nor a blue ribband bind up a wound so well as a fillet. 
5 The glitter of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes in- 
stead of curing them; and an aching head will be no more 
eased by wearing a crown than a common nightcap." In a far 
better style, and more accordant with his own humour of plain- 
ness, are the concluding sentences of his "Discourse upon 

10 Poetry." Temple took a part in the controversy about the 
ancient and the modern learning ; and, with that partiality so 
natural and so graceful in an old inan, whose state engage- 
ments had left him little leisure to look into modern produc- 
tions, while his retirement gave him occasion to look back upon 

15 the classic studies of his youth — decided in favour of the 
latter. " Certain it is," he says, " that, whether the fierceness 
of the Gothic humours, or noise of their perpetual wars, frighted 
it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modern languages 
would not bear it — the great heights and excellency both of 

20 poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and empire, 
and have never since recovered the admiration and applauses 
that before attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, 
they must be confessed to be the softest and sweetest, the most 
general and most innocent amusements of common time and 

25 life. They still find room in the courts of princes, and the cot- 
tages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead 
calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent 
passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. 
And both these effects are of equal use to human life ; for the 

30 mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the 
beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is so to 
both when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the mind, 
when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I know 
very well that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of 

35 being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music, as toys 
and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious 
men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to their 
charms, would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for 
fear of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the good- 



BARBARA S 245 

ness of their natures, if not of their understandings, into ques- 
tion. While this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and 
request of these two entertainments will do so too ; and happy 
those that content themselves with these, or any other so easy 
and so innocent, and do not trouble the world or other men, 5 
because they cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts 
them." " When all is done (he concludes), human life is at the 
greatest and the best but like a fro ward child, that must be . 
played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls 
asleep, and then the care is over." 10 



BARBARA S- 



On the noon of the 14th of JSTovember, 1743 or 4, I forget 

which it was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara S , 

with her accustomed punctuality, ascended the long rambling 
staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places, which led 
to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat 15 
sat the then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remem- 
ber) the old Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the cus- 
tom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the players to 
receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much 
that Barbara had to claim. 20 

The little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her 
important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the 
benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of 
her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her 
steps and to her behaviour. You would have taken her to have 25 
been at least five years older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or 
where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the man- 
ager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, 
had for some few months past intrusted to her the performance 30 
of whole parts. You may guess the self -consequence of the 
promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young 
Arthur^ ; had rallied Richard with infantine petulance in the 



248 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



I must throw a veil over some mortifying circumstances. 
Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was the only 
chance of a Sunday's (generally their only) meal of meat. 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, 
5 where in her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast 
fowl (O joy to Barbara!) some comic actor, who was for the 
night caterer for this dainty — in the misguided humour of his 
part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief and 
pain of heart to Barbara !) that when he crammed a portion of 
10 it into her mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to reject it; and 
w^hat with shame of her ill-acted part, and pain of real appetite 
at missing such a dainty, her little heart sobbed ahnost to 
breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed spectators 
were totally unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved her. 
15 This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood 
before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's pay- 
ment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical 
people besides herself say, of all men least calculated for 
20 a treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away at ran- 
dom, kept scarce any books, and summing up at the week's 
end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, blest himself 
that it was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare haK -guinea. — By 
25 mistake he popped into her hand a — whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake : God 
knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth 
30 landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of 
metal pressing her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child. From her parents and those 
about her, she had imbibed no contrary influence. But then 
35 they had taught her nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are 
not always porticoes of moral philosophy. This little maid had 
no instinct to evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed 
principle. She had heard honesty commended, but never 
dreamed of its a]3plication to herself. She thought of it as some- 



n 



BARBARA S 249 

thing which concerned grown up people, — men and women. 
She had never known temptation, or thought of preparing 
resistance against it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and 
explain to him his blunder. He was already so confused with 5 
age, besides a natural want of punctuality, that she would have 
had some difficulty in making him understand it. She saw that 
in an instant. And then it was such a bit of money ! and then 
the image of a larger allowance of butcher's meat on their table 
the next day came across her, till her little eyes glistened, and 10 
her mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always 
been so good-natured, had stood her friend behind the scenes, 
and even recommended her promotion to some of her little parts. 
But again the old man was reputed to be worth a world of 
money. He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of 15 
the theatre. And then came staring upon her the figures of her 
little stockingiess and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at 
her own neat white cotton stockings, which her situation at the 
theatre had made it indispensable for her mother to provide for 
her, with hard straining and pinching from the family stock, 20 
and thought how glad she should be to cover their poor feet 
with the same — and how then they could accompany her to re- 
hearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded from doing, 
by reason of their unfashionable attire, — in these thoughts she 
reached the second landing-place — the second, I mean, from 25 
the top — for there was still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never -failing friend did step in — for at that mo- 
ment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed 
to her — a reason above reasoning — and without her own 30 
agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to move), she 
found herself transported back to the individual desk she had 
just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who 
in silence took back the refunded treasure, and who had been 
sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to 35 
her were anxious ages ; and from that moment a deep peace 
fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality of honesty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to her profession 
brightened up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, 



250 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

set the whole family upon their legs again, and released her 
from the difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing- 
place. 

I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short 
5 of mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old 
man pocketed the difference, which had caused her such mortal 
throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the 
mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,^ then sixty-seven years of age 

10 (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles upon this childish 
occasion I have sometimes ventured to think her indebted for 
that power of rending the heart in the representation of con- 
flicting emotions, for which in after years she was considered as 
little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady Randolph) even 

15 to Mrs. Siddons. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 

IN A LETTER TO R S , ESQ. 

Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of disci- 
pline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church 
which you have so worthily historified, yet may the ill time 
never come to me, when with a chilled heart or a portion of ii'- 

20 reverent sentiment, I shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed 
Edifices. Judge then of my mortification when, after attending 
the choral anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and 
being desirous of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, 
with the tombs and antiquities there, I found myself excluded; 

25 turned out like a dog, or some profane person, into the common 
street, with feelings not very congenial to the place, or to the 
solemn service which I had been listening to. It was a jar after 
that music. 

1 The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, hy 
successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She 
was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a widow, when I knew her. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 261 

You had your education at Westminster; and doubtless 
among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered 
much of that devotional feeling in those young years, on which 
your purest mind feeds still — and may it feed ! The antiquarian 
spirit, strong in you, and gracefully blending ever with the reli- 5 
gious, may have been sown in you among those wrecks of splen- 
did mortality. You owe it to the place of your education ; you 
owe it to your learned fondness for the architecture of your an- 
cestors ; you owe it to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical 
establishment, which is daily lessened and called in question 10 
through these practices — to speak aloud your sense of them ; 
never to desist raising your voice against them, till they be 
totally done away with and abolished ; till the doors of West- 
minster Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though 
low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit 15 
an injury against his family economy, if he would be indulged 
with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to the de- 
cencies which you wish to see maintained in its impressive ser- 
vices, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of inspection to 
the poor at those times only, in which they must rob from their 20 
attendance on the worship every minute which they can bestow 
upon the fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up this 
subject, in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express 
their indignation. A word from you. Sir, — a hint in your 
Journal — would be sufficient to fling open the doors of the 25 
Beautiful Temple again, as we can remember them when we 
were boys. At that time of life, what would the imaginative 
faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have suffered, if the entrance 
to so much reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so 
much silver ! — If we had scraped it up to gain an occasional ad- 30 
mission (as we certainly should have done), would the sight of 
those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we have been 
weighing anxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates 
stood open as those of the adjacent Park ; when we could walk 
in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer 35 
time, as that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same 
as silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part 
of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of 
service -time) under the sum of two shillings. The rich and the 



252 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

great will smile at the anticlimax, presumed to lie in these two 
short words. But you can tell them, Sir, how much quiet worth, 
how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much taste and 
genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse incompe- 
5 tent to this demand. — A respected friend of ours, during his 
late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to 
St. Paul's. At the same time a decently-clothed man, with as 
decent a wife and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. 
The price was only twopence each person. The poor but decent 

10 man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were three of them, 
and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have 
seen the tomb of Xelson.° Perhaps the Interior of the Cathe- 
dral was his object. But in the state of his finances, even six- 
pence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy 

15 of the country (no man can do it more impressively) ; instruct 
them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, these 
minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame 
these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of 
your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate ad- 

20 mission would expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your 
boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, 
while it was free to all? Do the rabble come there, or trouble 
their heads about such speculations? It is all that you can do 
to drive them into your churches ; they do not voluntarily offer 

25 themselves. They have, alas! no passion for antiquities; for 
tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would 
be no longer the rabble. 

For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well- 
attested charge of violation adduced has been — a ridiculous 

30 dismemberment committed upon the efiigy of that amiable spy. 
Major Andre. And is it for this — the wanton mischief of some 
school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic 
Freedom — or the remote possibility of such a mischief occur- 
ring again, so easily to be prevented by stationing a constable 

35 within the walls, if the vergers are incompetent to the duty — 
is it upon such wretched pretences that the people of England 
are made to pay a new Peter's Pence, so long abrogated ; or 
must content themselves with contemplating the ragged Exte- 
rior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS 253 

that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about 
the unfortunate rehc ? — 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS 

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Clos'd o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 

I DO not know when I have experienced a stranger sensation 5 
than on seeing my old friend, G. D.,° who had been paying me 
a morning visit, a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Isling- 
ton,^ upon taking leave, instead of turning down the right-hand 
path by which he had entered — with staff in hand, and at 
noonday, deliberately march right forwards into the midst of 10 
the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear. 

A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling 
enough ; but, in the broad, open daylight, to witness such an 
unreserved motion towards self-destruction in a valued friend, 
took from me all power of speculation. 15 

How I found my feet I know not. Consciousness was quite 
gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I re- 
member nothing but the silvery apparition of a good white head 
emerging ; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen that wielded 
it) pointed upwards, as feeling lor the skies. In a moment (if 20 
time was in that time) he was on my shoulders, and I — freighted 
with a load more precious than his who bore Anchises.° 

And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of 
sundry passers-by, w^ho, albeit arriving a little too late to par- 
ticipate in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals 25 
came thronging to communicate their advice as to the recovery; 
prescribing variously the application, or non-application, of salt, 
etc., to the person of the patient. Life, meantime, was ebbing 
fast away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, 
more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed 30 
sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impos- 
sible, as one should think, to be missed on, — shall I confess? 
— in this emergency it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. 



254 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Great previous exertions — and mine had not been inconsider- 
able — are commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This 
was a moment of irresolution. 

MoNOCULUS — for so, in default of catching his true name, I 
5 choose to designate the medical gentleman w^ho now appeared 
— is a grave, middle-aged person, who, without having studied 
at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath 
employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental 
processes upon the bodies of unfortunate^ fellow-creatures, in 

10 whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, w^ould seem 
extinct and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding 
his services, from a case of common surfeit-suffocation to the 
ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful appli- 
cation of the plant Cannabis'^ outwardly. But though he de- 

15 clineth not altogether these drier extinctions, his occupation 
tendeth for the most part to water-practice ; for the convenience 
of which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters near the grand 
repository of the stream mentioned, where, day and night, from 
his little watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head,° he listeneth to 

20 detect the wrecks of drowned mortality — partly, as he saith, to 
be upon the spot — and partly, because the liquids w^hich he useth 
to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these distressing 
occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be found at 
these common hostelries than in the shops and phials of the 

25 apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, 
that it is reported he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong 
distance ; and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth 
a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but 
which, by time, and frequency of nightly divings, has been 

30 dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth by the name 
of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His 
remedy — after a sufficient application of W' arm blankets, fric- 
tion, etc., is a simple tumbler, or more, of the purest Cognac, 
with water, made as hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where 

35 he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he 
condescendeth to be the taster ; and showeth, by his own ex- 
ample, the innocuous nature of the prescription. Nothing can 
be more kind or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth 
confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS 255 

hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor swalloweth 
his own draught, what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him 
in the potion ? In fine, Monoculus is a humane, sensible man, 
who, for a slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is 
content to wear it out in the endeavour to save the lives of 5 
others — his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty I 
could press a crown upon him, for the price of restoring the 
existence of such an invaluable creature to society as G. D. 

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding alarm 
upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have given 10 
a shake to memory, calling up notice after notice, of all the 
providential deliverances he had experienced in the course of 
his long and innocent life. Sitting up on my couch — my 
couch which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, for the 
salutary repose which it administered, shall be honoured with 15 
costly valance, at some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at 
Colebrook, — he discoursed of marvellous escapes — by careless- 
ness of nurses — by pails of gelid, and kettles of the boiling 
element, in infancy — by orchard pranks, and snapping twigs, 
in schoolboy frolics — by descent of tiles at Trumpington, and 20 
of heavier tomes at Pembroke — by studious watchings, induc- 
ing frightful vigilance — by want, and the fear of want, and all 
the sore throbbings of the learned head. — Anon, he would 
burst out into little fragments of chanting — of songs long ago 
— ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered before since 25 
childhood, but coming up now, when his heart was made tender 
as a child's — for the tremor cordis ° in the retrospect of a recent 
deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting upon an 
innocent heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which we should 
do ill to christen cowardice; and Shakspeare, in the latter 30 
crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh° to remember the sitting by 
Babylon, and to mutter of shallow rivers. 

Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark you were like 
to have extinguished for ever ! Your salubrious streams to this 
City, for now near two centuries, would hardly have atoned 35 
for what you were in a moment washing away. Mockery of a 
river — liquid artifice — wretched conduit ! henceforth rank 
with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this that, smit 
in boyhood with the explorations of that Abyssinian traveller ,° 



256 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I paced the vales of Amwell to explore your tributary springs, 
to trace your salutary waters sparkling through green Hertford- 
shire, and cultured Enfield parks? — Ye have no swans° — no 
Naiads — no river God — or did the benevolent hoary aspect of 
5 my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also might have the 
tutelary genius of your waters ? 

Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have been some 
consonancy in it; but what willows had ye to wave and rustle 
over his moist sepulture? — or, having no name, besides that 
10 unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did ye think to get one 
by the noble prize, and henceforth to be termed the Stream 
Dyerian ? 

And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 

15 I protest, George, you shall not venture out again — no, not 
by daylight — without a sufficient pair of spectacles — in your 
musing moods especially. Your absence of mind we have 
borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question 
by it. You shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aris- 

20totle,° if we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your 
years, after your many tracts in favour of sprinkling only ! 

I have nothing but water in my head o'nights since this 
frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence^ in his 
dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, and 

25 crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that is, to me), "I 
sink in deep waters ; the billows go over my head, all the waves 
go over me. Selah." Then I have before me Palinurus,° just 
letting go the steerage. I cry out too late to save. Next follow 
— a mournful procession — suicidal faces, saved against their 

30 will from drowning; dolefully trailing a length of reluctant 
gratefulness, with ropy weeds pendent from locks of w^atchet 
hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's half -subjects — stolen fees 
from the grave — bilking Charon of his fare. At their head 
Arion — or is it G. D. ? — in his singing garments marcheth 

35 singly, with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Machaon 
(or Dr. Hawes°) snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to 
the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 257 

in which the half-drenched on earth are constrained to drown 
downright, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy- 
death. 

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible world 
when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so lately) to 5 
their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at 
Death's door, the sensation aroused within the palace must 
be considerable ; and the grim Feature, by modern science so 
often dispossessed of his prey, must have learned by this time 
to pity Tantalus. 10 

A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian 
shades, when the near arrival ohG. D. was announced by no 
equivocal indications. From their seats of AsphodeP arose the 
gentler and the graver ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian 
or of Roman lore — to crown with unfading chaplets the half- 15 
finished love-labours of their unwearied scholiast. Him Mark- 
land° expected — him Tyrwhitt'^ hoped to encounter — him the 
sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom he had barely seen upon 

earth,^ with newest airs prepared to greet ; and, patron of 

the gentle Christ's boy, — who should have been his patron 20 
through life — the mild Askew,° with longing aspirations, 
leaned foremost from his venerable ^sculapian chair, to wel- 
come into that happy company the matured virtues of the man, 
whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon earth had so 
prophetically fed and watered. 25 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 

Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — are 
among the very best of their sort. They fall below the plain 
moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest spirit of self- 
approval, of Milton, in his compositions of a similar structure. 
They are in truth what Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says of 30 
that work (to which they are a sort of after-tune or applica- 
tion), ^'vain and amatorious " enough, yet the things in their 

1 Graium tantum vidit. 



258 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

kind (as he confesses to be true of the romance) may be '^ full 
of worth and wit." They savour of the Courtier, it must be 
allowed, and not of the Commonwealthsman. But Milton was 
a Courtier when he wrote the Masque at Ludlow Castle, and 
5 still more a Courtier when he composed the Arcades. When 
the national struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast these 
vanities behind him ; and if the order of time had thrown Sir 
Philip upon the crisis which preceded the Revolution, there is 
no reason why he should not have acted the same part in that 

10 emergency, which has glorified the name of a later Sydney.^ 
He did not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. His letter 
on the French match may testify he could speak his mind freely 
to Princes. The times did not call him to the scaffold. 

The Sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Milton were 

15 the compositions of his maturest years. Those of Sydney, which 
I am about to produce, were written in the very heyday of his 
blood. They are stack full of amorous fancies — far-fetched 
conceits, befitting his occupation ; for True Love thinks no 
labour to send out Thoughts upon the vast and more than 

20 Lidian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, 
gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self-depreciating simili- 
tudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. We 
must be Lovers — or at least the cooling touch of time, the 
circum prcecordia frigus° must not have so damped our faculties, 

25 as to take away our recollection that we were once so — before 
we can duly appreciate the glorious vanities and graceful 
hyperboles of the passion. The images which lie before our 
feet (though by some accounted the only natural) are least 
natural for the high Sydnean love to express its fancies by. 

30 They may serve for the loves of Tibullus, or the dear Author^ 
of the Schoolmistress ; for passions that creep and whine in 
Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved 
at this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses {ad Leonoram I 
mean) have rather erred on the farther side ; and that the poet 

35 came not much short of a religious indecorum, when he could 
thus apostrophize a singing-girl : 

Angelus unicmque suus (sic credite gentes) 
Obtigit sethereis ales ab ordinibus. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 259 

Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 

Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ? 
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli 

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens ; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda 5 

Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus. 

In te una loquitur, c^etera mutus habet. 

This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it requires some 
candour of construction (besides the slight darkening of a dead 10 
language) to cast a veil over the ugly appearance of something 
very like blasphemy in the last two verses. I think the Lover 
would have been staggered if he had gone about to express the 
same thought in English. I am sure Sydney has no flights like 
this. His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he 15 
takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with 
his mortal passions. 



With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies 

How silently ; and with how wan a face ! 

What! may it be, that even in heavenly place 20 

That busy Archer his sharp arrow tries ? 

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 

I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 

To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 25 

Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, 

Ls constant love deem'd there but want of wit? 

Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess? 30 

Do they call virtue there — ungratefuhiess 9 

The last line of this poem is a little obscured by transposition. 
He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue ? 



Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, 35 



260 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
The indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease i 
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 
5 O make in me those civil wars to cease : 

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 
Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
10 And if these things, as being thine by right, 

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 



The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes, 

15 Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 

With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies. 
Others, because the Prince my service tries, 

20 Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 

But harder judges judge, ambition's rage, 
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage. 
O fools, or over-wise! alas, the race 

25 Of all my thoughts had neither stop nor start, 

But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 



Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
Seem most alone in greatest company, 
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry, 

80 To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 

They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, 
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
So in my swelling breast, that only I 
Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 

35 Yet Pride, I think, doth not my Soul possess, 

Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess. 
That makes me oft my best friends overpass, 
Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 

40 B^nd^ all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 

1 Press. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 261 



Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance, 

Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 

Both by the judgment of the English eyes, 

And of some sent from that sioeet enemy, — France ; 

Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 5 

Townsfolk my strength; a daintier judge applies 

His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise ; 

Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 

Others, because of both sides I do take 

My blood from them, who did excel in this, ]0 

Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 

How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 

Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face 

Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 



In martial sports I had my cunning tried, 15 

And yet to break more staves did me address, 

While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 

Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride — 

When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 

In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, 20 

*' What now, Sir Fool ! " said he ; "I would no less : 

Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied. 

Who hard by made a window send forth light. 

My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 

One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 25 

Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 

My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 

Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 



No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 

give my passions leave to run their race ; 30 
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 

Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 

Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 

Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace ; 

Let all the world with scorn recount my case — 35 

But do not will me from my love to fly. 

1 do not envy Aristotle's wit. 

Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame; 

Nor aught do care, though some above me sit ; 



262 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 



Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame. 
But that which once may win thy cruel heart : 
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 



Love still a hoy, and oft a wanton, is, 
5 School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 

What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss, 
When for so soft a rod dear play he try? 
And yet ray Star, because a sugar'd kiss 
In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie, 

10 Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 

Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 
But no 'sense serves ; she makes her wrath appear 
In Beauty's throne — see now who dares come near 
Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain? 

15 O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 

Anger invests with such a lovely grace, 
That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 



I never drank of Aganippe well, 
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe° sit, 

20 And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 

Poor-layman, I, for sacred rites unlit. 
Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell. 
But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 
And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 

25 I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 

How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 
My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 
In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please ? 
Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no ! 

30 Or so ? — much less. How then ? sure thus it is, 

My lips are sweet, inspir'd with Stella's kiss. 



Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name. 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
35 Although less gifts imp° feathers oft on Fame. 

Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ; 
And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 263 



That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain. 
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid, 
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws, 
That witty Lewis° to him a tribute paid. 
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause — 
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 



happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 

1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 

Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 10 

While those fair planets on thy streams did shine ; 

The boat for joy could not to dance forbear. 

While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 

Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 

They did themselves (O sweetest prison) twine. 15 

And fain those ^Eol's^ youth there would their stay 

Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly. 

First did with puffing kiss those locks display. 

She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 

With sight thereof cried out, O fair disgrace, 20 

Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place ! 



Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 

And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet. 

Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet. 

More soft than to a chamber melody ; 25 

Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 

To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet, 

My Muse and I must you of duty greet 

With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 

Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed, 30 

By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot; 

Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed. 

And that you know, I envy you no lot 

Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss. 

Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 35 

Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last sonnet, 
are my favourites. But the general beauty of them all is, that 
they are so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of " learning 



264 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

and of chivalry/' — of which union, Spenser has entitled 
Sydney to have been the " president," — shines through them. 
I confess I can see nothing of the '' jejune " or "frigid "in 
them ; much less of the " stifi " and "cumbrous " — which I have 
5 sometimes heard objected to the Arcadia. The verse runs off 
swiftly and gallantly. It might have been tuned to the 
trumpet ; or tempered (as himself expresses it) to " trampling 
horses' feet." They abound in felicitous phrases — 

O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 

Uh Sonnet. 

10 Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 

A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 

2d Sonnet. 

That sweet enemy, — France — 

^th Sonnet. 

But they are not rich in words only, in vague and unlocalised 

15 feelings — the failing too much of some poetry of the present 
day — they are full, material, and circumstantiated. Time 
and place appropriates every one of them. It is not a fever of 
passion wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty words, but a 
transcendent passion pervading and illuminating action, pur- 

20 suits, studies, feats of arms, the opinions of contemporaries, 
and his judgment of them. An historical thread runs through 
them, which almost affixes a date to them ; marks the when and 
where they were written. 

I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit of 

25 these poems, because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish 
I could treat it by a gentler name) with which W. H.° takes 
every occasion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. 
But the decisions of the Author of Table Talk, etc. (most pro- 
found and subtle where they are, as for the most part, just), 

30 are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and authors he 
has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived an ac- 
cidental prejudice against. Milton wrote sonnets, and was a 
king-hater ; and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier 
to a patriot. But I was unwilling to lose a fine idea from my 

35 mind. The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 265 

delicacies of character, scattered all over the Arcadia fspite of 
some stiifness and encumberment), justify to me the character 
which his contemporaries have left us of the writer. I climot 
think with the Critic, that Sir Philip Sydney was that TZf 
bnous thing which a foolish noblemaii in his insolent hosK 5 
chose to term him. I call to mind the epitaph made oThim ^ 
to guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and I reposrupon Ihe 
beautiful lines m the -Friend's Passion for Ms IsWhel ' 
printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others '''^^''^^'^' 



^To??^T "77.^^ knew not Astrophel? 
\ Au ^^o^ld live to say I knew, 
And have not in possession still ! ) — 
Ihings known permit me to renew — 

Ot him you know his merit such, 

1 cannot say — you hear — too much. 

Within these woods of Arcady 
He chief delight and pleasure took ; 
And on the mountain Partheny 
Upon the crystal liquid brook, 

The Muses met him every day, 

That taught him sing, to write, and say. 

When he descended down the mount 
His personage seemed most divine • 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 

To hear him speak, and sweetly smile. 

You were in Paradise the while. 

A sweet attractive kind of grace • 

A full assurance given by looks^'- 

Continual comfort in a face, ' oa 

The lineaments of Gospel books — 

I trow that count'nance cannot lye 

Whose thoughts are legible in the ejie 

* * ''• * * * 

Above all others this is he. 

Which erst approved in his song, 35 

Ihat love and honour might agree 

And that pure love will do no wrong 



10 



15 



20 



25 



266 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 
To love a man of virtuous name. 

Did never Love so sweetly breathe 

In any mortal breast before ; 
5 Did never Muse inspire beneath 

A Poet's brain with finer store ! 
He wrote of Love with high conceit, 
And Beauty rear'd above her height. 

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into 
10 rage) in the Poem, — the last in the collection accompanying 
the above, — which from internal testimony I believe to be 
Lord Brooke's — beginning with " Silence augmenteth grief," 
and then seriously ask himself, whether the subjects of such 
absorbing and confounding regrets could have been that thing 
15 which Lord Oxford termed him. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not remember that he 
ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at Somerset House 
in his life. He might occasionally have escorted a party of 
ladies across the way that were going in; but he never went in 

20 of his own head. Yet the office of the Morning Post newspaper 
stood then just where it does now — we are carrying you back, 
Reader, some thirty years or more — with its gilt-globe-topt 
front facing that emporium of our artists' grand Annual Ex- 
posure. We soinetimes wish that we had observed the same 

25 abstinence with Daniel. 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one of the 
finest-tempered* of Editors. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, 
was equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight one either, of the 
courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English all over. AVe have 

30 worked for both these gentlemen. 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ; to 
trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 267 

wi*^ ^o^y reverence to approach the rocks, 
WheDce glide the streams renowned in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's exploratory 
ramblmgs after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember 
on one fine summer holyday (a '^ whole day's leave " we called it 5 
at Christ s Hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well 
provisioned either for such an undertaking, to trace the current 
of the New River — Middletonian stream! -to its scaturient° 
source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly 
did we commence our solitary quest — for it was essential to 10 
the dignity of a Discovery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our 
own should beam on the detection. By flowery spots, and ver- 
dant lanes skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a 
baffling turn; endless, hopeless meanders, as it seemed; or 
as It the jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant to have the 15 
humble spot of their nativity revealed; till spent, and nigh 
tarnished, before set of the same sun, we sate down somewhere 
by iiovves Farm near Tottenham, with a tithe of our proposed 
labours only yet accomplished; sorely convinced in spirit that 
shoulde'rT''^'' enterprise was as yet too arduous for our young 20 

^ot more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the traveller 
IS the tracing of some mighty waters up to their shallow font- 
let, than it is to a pleased and candid reader to go back to the 
inexperienced essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of 25 
some established name in literature; from the Gnat° which 
preluded to the ^neid, to the Duck° which Samuel Johnson 
trod on. 

In those days, every Morning Paper, as an essential retainer 
to Its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish 30 
daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke — and 
It was thought pretty high too — was Dan Stuart's settled re- 
muneration m these cases. The chat of the day - scandal, but, 
above all, dress — tuvmshed the material. The lenoth of nJ 
paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, 35 
but they must be poignant. 

A fashion oi flesh, or rather jom^coloured hose for the ladies, 
luckily coming up at the juncture when we were on our probation 



268 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, established our repu- 
tation in that line. We were pronounced a " capital hand." O 
the conceits which we varied upon red in all its prismatic dif- 
ferences 1 from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea,° to the 
5 flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon '' many 
waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. What 
an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself , of touching 
that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly 
ever approximating something " not quite proper ; " while, like 

10 a skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their 
opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth devia- 
tion is destruction ; hovering in the confines of light and dark- 
ness, or where " both seem either ; " a hazy uncertain delicacy ; 
Autolycus-like in the Play, still putting oft his expectant audi- 

15 tory with " Whoop, do me no harm, good man ! " But above 
all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles 
our midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of 
Astrsea^ — ultima Coelestum terras reliquit° — we pronounced — 
in reference to the stockings still — that Modesty taking 

20 HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALS, HER LAST BlUSH WAS VISIBLE 
IN HER ASCENT TO THE HeAVENS BY THE TRACT OF THE GLOW- 
ING INSTEP. This might be called the crowning conceit : and 
was esteemed tolerable writing in those days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away ; 

25 as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. The 
ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to reassume 
their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other 
female whims followed, but none, methought, so pregnant, so 
invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings. 

30 Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily con- 
secutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the stoutest digestion. 
But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a 
fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained 
to do, was a little harder exaction. " Man goeth forth to his 

35 work until the evening" — from a reasonable hour in the morn- 
ing, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation 
took us up from eight till five every day in the City ; and as 
our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with 
anything rather than business, it follows, that the only time we 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 269 

could spare for this manufactory of jokes -our supplementary 
livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread 
and cheese- was exactly that part of the day which (as we 
have heard of 1.0 Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No 
Man s lime ; that is, no time in which a man ought to be ur. k 
and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an 
hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, whose 
breakfTst ""^ ^° preposterously, has to wait for his 

O those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past in 
five m summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were 
compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in 
bed — (for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we 
anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising -we like a pirting 
cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminatlis 
times, and to have our friends about us -we were not constel 
lated under Aquarius that watery sign, and therefore incapable 
of Bacchus," cold, washy, bloodless -we were none of your 
Basilian watersponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount 
i^d^thTvT I;T tn\* *T"g Capulets, jolly "companions, we 20 
^ty.^P'' ""/• 1 ° Y^*•° ^^'^ '^^' *' ^^ s^id before, curtailed 
ot half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refresh- 
ing Bohea m the distance- to be necessitated to rouse ourselves 
at he detestable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed 
to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was 25 

JlZl^ i "'"' t^^ ^^T ''^^PPy knuckles we have often 
yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber 

future— * "" *° ^'^ ^'^'^^ imseasonable rest-breakers in 

in^-lffl^''^ sweet as Virgil sings, had been the " descend- 30 
ZL *^ti,°''''M?'^H' balmy the first sinking of the heavy 
head upon the pillow ; but to get up, as he goes on to say, 

— revocare gradus, superasque evaders ad auras° — 

and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended 
— there was the " labour," there the " work." 35 

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that 
our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the 



270 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen 
jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why, it seems nothing! 
We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter 
of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they 

5 come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them 
— when the mountain must go to Mahomet — 

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth. 
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came 
up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged un tractable subject; 

10 some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some 
feature, upon which no smile could play ; some flint, from which 
no process of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There 
they lay ; there your appointed tale° of brick-making was set 
before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it 

15 happened. The craving dragon — the Public — like him in Bel's 
Temple — must be fed, it expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, 
and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this 
side bursting him. 

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the Post, 

20 and writhing under the toil of what is called ''easy writing," 
Bob Allen,° our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his imprac- 
ticable brains in a like service for the Oracle. Not that Robert 
troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a 
sprightly air about them, it was sufficient. He carried this non- 
25 chalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that 
no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his em- 
ployers for a good jest ; for example sake — " Walking yesterday 
morning casually down Snoiv Hill, who should ice meet hut Mr. 
Deputy Humphreys ! we rejoice to addj that the worthy Deputy 

30 appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do not remember ever 
to have seen him look better.'' This gentleman so surprisingly 
met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, 
was a constant butt for mirth to the small paragraph-mongers 
of the day ; and our friend thought that he might have his fling 

35 at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn shortly after this 
extraordinary rencounter, which he told with tears of satisfaction 
in his eyes, and chuckling at the anticipated effects of its an- 
nouncement next day in the paper. We did not quite compre- 
hend where the wit of it lay at the time ; nor was it easy to be 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 271 

detected, when the thing came out advantaged by type and 
letterpress. He had better have met anything that morning 
than a Common Council Man. His services were shortly after 
dispensed with, on the plea that his paragraphs of late had been 
deficient in point. The one in question, it must be owned, had 5 
an air, in the opening especially, proper to awaken curiosity ; 
and the sentiment, or moral, wears the aspect of humanity and 
good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the concluvsion was 
not judged altogether to answer to the magnificent promise of 
the premises. We traced our friend's pen afterwards in the 10 
True Briton, the Star, the Traveller, — from all which he was 
successively dismissed, the Proprietors having '' no farther occa- 
sion for his services." Nothing was easier than to detect him. 
When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly appeared 
the following — " It is not geiierally known that the three Blue Balls 15 
at the Pawnbrokers^ shops are the ancient arms of Lomhardy. The 
Lombards were the first money-brokers in Europe.'^ Bob has done 
more to set the public right on this important point of blazonry, 
than the whole College of Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a p^rt 20 
of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their own 
jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, 
brought up the set custom of " witty paragraphs " first in the 
World. Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and 
succeeded poor Allen in the Oracle. But, as we said, the fashion 25 
of jokes passes away ; and it would be difficult to discover in the 
Biographer of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and 
fancy which charmed the whole town at the commencement of 
the present century. Even the prelusive delicacies of the pres- 
ent writer — the curt " Astrsean allusion" — would be thought 30 
pedantic and out of date, in these days. 

From the office of the Morning Post (for we may as well ex- 
haust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of prop- 
erty in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exchange ! 
to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Mu-35 
seum, in Fleet-street. What a transition — from a handsome 
apartment, from rosewood desks and silver inkstands, to an 
office — no office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the 
occupation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redolent — 



272 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

from the centre of loyalty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity 
and sedition ! Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square 
contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor and humble 
paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of 
5 his new Editorial functions (the " Bigod " of Elia) the re- 
doubted John Fenwick. 

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many 
in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had 
purchased (on tick, doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, 

10 Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were 
worth) of the Albion from one Lovell ; of whom we know 
nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on 
the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern — for it had 
been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now 

15 reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers — F. reso- 
lutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the . 
first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. 
For seven weeks and more did this infatuated Democrat go 
about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet 

20 the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no credit 
to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer 
bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of 
our friend. Oar occupation now was to write treason. 

Recollections of feelings — which were all that now remained 

25 from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, 
when if we were misled, we erred in the company of some who 
are accounted very good men now — ^ rather than any tendency 
at this time to Republican doctrines — assisted us in assuming 
a style of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very 

30 under tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was 
now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. 
Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers of 
so cunning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says, never naming 
the thing directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney-General 

35 was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. 
There were times, indeed, when we sighed for onr more gentle- 
man-like occupation under Stuart. But with change of mas- 
ters it is ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and 
another, as we learned afterwards from^ a gentleman at the 



THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN MODERN ART 273 

Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view 
of its being submitted at least to the attention of the proper 
Law Officers — when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from 

our pen, aimed at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve of 

departing for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy, as F. pro- 5 
nounced it (it is hardly worth particularizing), happening to 
offend the nice sense of Lord, (or, as he then delighted to be 
called, Citizen Stanhope), deprived F. at once of the last hopes 
of a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us ; and 
breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but some- 10 
what mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers. — It was 
about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that 
curious confession to us, that he had '' never deliberately 
walked into an Exhibition at Somerset House in his life." 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN 
THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART 

Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within 15 
the last fifty years, or since the humour of exhibiting began, 
that has treated a story imaginatively ? By this we mean, upon 
whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct 
him — not to be arranged by him? Any upon whom its lead- 
ing or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyranni- 20 
cally, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify 
a revelation? Any that has imparted to his compositions, nof 
merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story with 
clearness, but that individualizing property, which should keep 
the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other sub- 25 
ject, however similar, and to common apprehensions almost 
identical; so that we might say, this and this part could have 
found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world 
but this? Is there anything in modern art — we will not de- 
mand that it should be equal — but in any way analogous to 30 
what Titian° has effected, in that wonderful bringing together 
of two times in the " Ariadne,^ " in the National Gallery ? Pre- 

T 



274 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

cipitous, with his reeling satyr rout about him, repeopling and 
re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury 
beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself 
at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of 
5 the story, an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly 
proud. (xuido,° in his harmonious version of it, saw no farther. 
But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has re- 
called past time, and laid it contributory with the present to 
one simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the 

10 mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence 
and new offers of a god, — as if unconscious of Bacchus, or 
but idly casting her eyes as upon some un concerning pageant 
— her soul undistracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pac- 
ing the solitary shore, in as much he art -silence, and in almost 

15 the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to 
catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the 
Athenian. 

Here are two points miraculously co-uniting ; fierce society, 
with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noonday revelations, 

20 with the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and linger- 
ing ; the present Bacchus, with th^past Ariadne; two stories, with 
double Time; separate, and harmonizing. Had the artist made 
the woman one shade less indifferent to the God ; still more, 
had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where w^ould have 

25 been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart previous? 
merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with 
a welcome acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus was 
not likely to be pieced up by a God. 
« We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture by 

30 Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of the new- 
born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother of man- 
kind we might imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of men 
since born. But these are matters subordinate to the con- 
ception of the situation, displayed in this extraordinary produc- 

35 tion . A tolerable modern artist would have been satisfied 
with tempering certain raptures of connubial anticipation, with 
a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in the 
countenance of the first bridegroom: something like the 
divided attention of the child (Adam was here a child-man) 



THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN MODERN ART 275 

between the given toy, and the mother who had just blest it 
with the bauble. This is the obvious, the first-sight view, the 
superficial. An artist of a higher grade, considering the awful 
presence they were in, would have taken care to subtiact 
something from the expression of the more human passion, 5 
and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would be as 
much as an exhibition -goer, from the opening of Somerset 
House to last year's show, has been encouraged to look for. 
It is obvious to hint at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, 
for respects of drawing and colouring, might be deemed not 10 
wholly inadmissible within these art-fostering walls, in which 
the raptures should be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or 
perhaps zero ! By neither the one passion nor the other has 
Kaphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his 
brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. 15 
The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not self- 
conscious of his art, in which neither of the conflicting 
emotions — a moment how abstracted — have had time to 
spring up, or to battle for indecorous mastery. — We have seen 
a landscape of a justly-admired neoteric, in which he aimed at 20 
delineating a fiction, one of the most severely beautiful in 

antiquity — the gardens of the Hesperides. To do Mr. 

justice, he had painted a laudable orchard, with fitting seclu- 
sion, and a veritable dragon (of which a Polypherae by Poussin^ 
is somehow a fac-simile for the situation), looking over into 25 
the world shut out backwards, so that none but a " still-climb- 
ing Hercules " could hope to catch a peep at the admired 
Ternary^ of Recluses. No conventual porter could keep his 
keys better than this custos with the " lidless eyes." He not 
only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, but, as clear 30 
as daylight, that none but Hercules aut Diabolus by any man- 
ner of means can. So far all is well. We have absolute soli- 
tude here or nowhere. Ab extra the damsels are snug enough. 
But here the artist's courage seems to have failed him. He 
began to pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the irksome- 35 
ness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, 
maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, according to 
the approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century; 
giving to the whole scene the air of 2ifete-champetre, if we will 



276 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and 
Watteauish.° But what is become of the solitary mystery — 
the 



Daughters three, 
That sing around, the golden tree ? 



This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this 
subject. 

The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural 
designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objections to 

10 the theory of our motto. They are of a character, we confess, 
to stagger it. His towered structures are of the highest order 
of the material sublime. Whether they were dreams, or trans- 
cripts of some elder workmanship — Assyrian ruins old — 
restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched 

15 and craving conceptions of the glories of the antique world. 
It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, the 
imagination of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us 
examine the point of the story in the " Belshazzar's reast.°" 
We will introduce it by an apposite anecdote. 

20 The court historians of the day record, that at the first 
dinner given by the late King (then Prince Regent) at the 
Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was played o'ff. 
The guests were select and admiring ; the banquet profuse and 
admirable ; the lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was per- 

25 fectly dazzled with the display of plate, among which the 
great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia in the Tower 
for tliis especial purpose, itself a tower! stood conspicuous for 
its magnitude. And now the Rev. * * * *, the then admired 
court Chaplain, was proceeding with the grace, when, at a 

30 signal given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge 
transparency was discovered, in which glittered in gold 
letters — 

" Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up- Alive ! " 

Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges and garters, 

35 jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion! The fans 

dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly court- 



THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN MODERN ART 277 

pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess 
of * * * holding the smelling-bottle, till the good-humoured 
Prince caused harmony to be restored, by calling in fresh 
candles, and declaring that the whole was nothing but a panto- 
mime hoax, got up by the ingenious Mr. Farley of Covents 
Garden, from hints which his Royal Highness himself had fur- 
nished ! Then imagine the infinite applause that followed, the 
mutual rallyings, the declarations that "they were not much 
frightened," of the assembled galaxy. 

The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the 10 
appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The huddle, 
the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock 
alarm ; the prettinesses heightened by consternation ; the cour- 
tier's fear which was flattery, and the lady's which was affecta- 
tion ; all that we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of 15 
Brighton courtiers, sympathizing with the well-acted surprise 
of their sovereign ; all this, and no more, is exhibited by the 
well-dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this 
sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of disquieted 
wild geese at the report only of a gun having gone off ! 20 

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the 
preservation of their persons, — such as we have witnessed at a 
theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given — an ade- 
quate exponent of a supernatural terror? the way in which the 
finger of God, writing judgments, would have been met by the 25 
withered conscience? There is a human fear, and a divine 
fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape ; 
the other is bowed down, effortless, passive. When the spirit 
appeared before Eliphaz° in the visions of the night, and the 
hair of his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts of the Te- 30 
manite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call uj) the servants ? 
But let us see in the text what there is to justify all this huddle 
of vulgar consternation. 

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had 
made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine 35 
before the thousand. The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously 
enumerated, with the princes, the king's concubines, and his 
wives. Then follows — 

"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and 



278 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall 
of the king's palace ; and the king saw the part of the hand that 
wrote. Then the king's countenance was changed, and his 
thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were 
5 loosened, and his knees smote one against another." 

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise in- 
ferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy 
of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word 
is spoken of its being seen by any else there present, not even 

10 by the queen herself, who merely undertakes for the interpreta- 
tion of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her 
husband. The lords are simply said to be astonished ; Le. at 
the trouble and the change of countenance in their sovereign. 
Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which 

15 the king saw. He recalls it only, as Joseph did the Dream to 
the King of Egypt. " Then was the part of the hand sent from 
him [the Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of 
the phantasm as past. 

Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the 

20 miracle? this message to a royal conscience, singly expressed — 
for it was said, "Thy kingdom is divided," — simultaneously 
impressed upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, who were 
implied in it neither directly nor grammatically? 

But, admitting the artist's own version of' the story, and that 

25 the sight was seen also by the thousand courtiers — let it have 
been visible to all Babylon — as the knees of Belshazzar were 
shaken, and his countenance troubled, even so would the knees 
of every man in Babylon, and their countenances, as of an 
individual man, been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would 

30 they have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of struggling 
with that inevitable judgment. 

Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be shown in 
every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant 
individualities in a "Marriage at Cana," by Yeronese,° or Titian, 

35 to the very texture and colour of the wedding garments, the 
ring glittering upon the bride's finger, the metal and fashion of 
the wine-pots ; for at such seasons there is leisure and luxury 
to be curious. But in a '' day of judgment," or in a " day of 
lesser horrors, yet divine," as at the impious feast of Belshazzar, 



THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN MODERN ART 279 

the eye should see, as the actual eye of an agent or patient in 
the immediate scene would see, only in masses and indistinction. 
Not only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the critical 
eye of the fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a lady's maga- 
zine, in the criticised picture, — but perhaps the curiosities of 5 
anatomical science, and studied diversities of posture in the 
falling angels and sinners of Michael Angelo, — have no busi- 
ness in their great subjectSc There was no leisure for them. 

By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting got at 
their true conclusions ; by not showing the actual appearances, 10 
that is, all that was to be seen at any given moment by an 
indifferent eye, but only what the eye might be supposed to see 
in the doing or suffering of some portentous action. Suppose 
the moment of the swallowing up of Pompeii. There they 
were to be seen — houses, columns, architectural proportions, 15 
differences of public and private buildings, men and women at 
their standing occupations, the diversified thousand postures, 
attitudes, dresses, in some confusion truly, but physically they 
were visible. But what eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, 
which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses 20 
are upturned from their proprieties, when sight and hearing 
are a feeling only? A thousand years have passed, and we are 
at leisure to contemplate the weaver fixed standing at his shut- 
tle, the baker at his oven, and to turn over with antiquarian 
coolness the pots and pans of Pompeii. ' 25 

" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the 
valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnificent Hebraism, 
in his conception, sees aught but the heroic son of Nun, with 
the outstretched arm, and the greater and lesser light obse- 
quious? Doubtless there were to be seen hill and dale, and 30 
chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or winding by secret 
defiles, and all the circumstances and stratagems of war. But 
whose eyes would have been conscious of this array at the inter- 
position of the synchronic miracle? Yet in the picture of this 
subject by the artist of the Belshazzar's Feast — no ignoble 35 
work either — the marshalling and landscape of the war is 
everything, the miracle sinks into an anecdote of the day ; and 
the eye may "dart through rank and file traverse" for some 
minutes, before it shall discover, among his armed followers, 



280 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

which is Joshua ! ^ot modern art alone, but ancient, where 
only it is to be found if anywhere, can be detected erring, from 
defect of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to 
sliow of the preternatural in painting, transcending the figure 
5 of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great picture at 
Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two beings. A ghastly 
horror at itself struggles with newly-apprehending gratitude 
at second life bestowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost. 
It has hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of the world of 

10 spirits. — Was it from a feeling, that the crowd of half-impas- 
sioned bystanders, and the still more irrelevant herd of passers-by 
at a distance, who have not heard, or but faintly have been told 
of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in design and 
hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond adequately to 

15 the action — that the single figure of the Lazarus has been 
attributed to Michael Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian un- 
fairly robbed of the fame of the greater half of the interest? 
Now that there were not indifferent passers-by within actual 
scope of the eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the 

20 sound of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be 
hardihood to deny ; but would they see them ? or can the mind 
in the conception of it admit of such unconcerning objects, — 
can it think of them at all? or what associating league to the 
imagination can there be between the seers and the seers not, 

25 of a presential miracle ? 

Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a Dryad, 
we will ask whether, in the present low state of expectation, the 
patron would not, or ought not, to be fully satisfied with a 
beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks ? 

30 Disseat those woods, and place the same figure among fountains, 
and falls of pellucid water, and you have a — Naiad ! Not so 
in a rough print we have seen after Julio Romano,^ we think — 
for it is long since — there, by no process, with mere change of 
scene, could the figure have reciprocated characters. Long, 

35 grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, beautiful in 
convolution and distortion, linked to her connatural tree, co- 
twisting with its limbs her own, till both seemed either — 
these, animated branches; those, disanimated members — yet 
the animal and vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct — his 



THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY m MODEEN ART 281 

Dryad° lay — an approximation of two natures, which to con- 
ceive, it must be seen ; analogous to, not the same wdth. the 
delicacies of O vidian transformations. ° 

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial comprehension, 
the most barren, the Great Masters gave loftiness and fruitful- 5 
ness. The large eye of genius saw in the meanness of present 
objects their capabilities of treatment from their relations to 
some grand Past or Future. How has Raphael — we must still 
linger about the Vatican — treated the humble craft of the ship- 
builder, in his " Building of the Ark " ? It is in that scriptural 10 
series, to which we have referred, and which, judging from some 
fine rough old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem 
to be of a higher and more poetic grade than even the Cartoons. 
The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is 
a cowardice in modern art. As the Frenchman, of whom 15 
Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at Rome, from the 
beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo collected no 
inferences beyond that of a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so from 
this subject, of mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively 
turn away, as from one incapable of investiture with any 20 
grandeur. The dockyards at Woolwich would object derogatory 
associations. The depot at Chatham w^ould be the mote and the 
beam in its intellectual eye. But not to the nautical prepara- 
tions in the ship-yards of Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for 
instructions, when he imagined the Building of the Vessel that 25 
was to be conservatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned 
piankind. In the intensity of the action he keeps ever out of 
sight the meanness of the operation. There is the Patriarch, in 
calm forethought, and with holy prescience, giving directions. 
And there are his agents — the solitary but sufficient Three — 30 
hewing, sawing, every one with the might and earnestness of 
a Demiurgus°; under some instinctive rather than technical 
guidance ; giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules ; or liker to 
those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns under Mongi- 
bello wrought in fire — Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyrac- 35 
mon. So work the workmen that should repair a world ! 

Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with pictorial 
subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly every- 
thing, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's colour — the 



282 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaif — do they 
haunt us perpetually in the reading? or are they obtruded 
upon our conceptions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost 
in admiration at the respective moral or intellectual attributes 
5 of the character? But in a picture Othello is always a Blacka- 
moor; and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealized, 
and enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters of externality, 
must be the mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of 
the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote — the errant° Star 

10 of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse — has never pre- 
sented itself, divested from the unhallowed accompaniment of a 
Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosinante. That man 
has read his book by halves; he has laughed, mistaking his 
author's purport, which was — tears. The artist that pictures 

15 Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he is every 
season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shallow hope of 
exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble at the heels of 
his starved steed. We wish not to see that counterfeited, 
which we would not have wished to see in the reality. Con- 

20 scious of the heroic inside of the noble Quixote, who, on hear- 
ing that his withered person was passing, would have stepped 
over his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the 
"strange bed-fellows which misery brings a man acquainted 
with " ? Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy Second Part could 

25 put into the mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a 
super-chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of the shep- 
herdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their pretty net- 
works, and inviting him to be a guest with them, in accents 
like these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Actseon was not more as- 

30 tonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the fountain, 
than I have been in beholding your beauty : I commend the 
manner of your pastime, and thank you for your kind offers ; 
and, if I may serve you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, 
you may command me : for my profession is this. To show my- 

35 self thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially 
of the rank that your person shows you to be; and if those 
nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should take 
up the whole world, I would seek out new worlds to pass 
through, rather than break them : and (he adds) that you may 



THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN MODERN ART 283 

give credit to this my exaggeration, behold at least he that 
promiseth you this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply 
this name hath come to your hearing." Illustrious Komancer ! 
were the "fine frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own 
Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed to 5 
the jeers of Duennas and Serving-men? to be monstered, and 
shown up at the heartless banquets of great men ? Was that 
pitiable infirmity, which in thy First Part misleads him, always 
from within^ into half -ludicrous, but more than half-compassion- 
able and admirable errors, not infliction enough from heaven, 10 
that men by studied artifices must devise and practise upon 
the humour, to inflame where they should soothe it? Why, 
GoneriP would have blushed to practise upon the abdicated 
king at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan° not have endured 
to play the pranks upon his fled wits, which thou first made 15 
thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands of that 
unworthy nobleman.^ 

In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of the most 
consummate artist in the Book w^ay that the world hath yet 
seen, to keep up in the mind of the reader the heroic attributes 20 
of the character without relaxing ; so as absolutely that they 
shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship of the clown. 
If it ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to 
laugh; or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion? — Cer- 
vantes, stung, perchance, by the relish with which his Reading 25 
Public had received the fooleries of the man, more to their 
palates than the generosities of the master, in the sequel let his 
pen run riot, lost the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed 
a great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. We know that 
in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than the 30 
Squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to him — as 
afterwards it did to his scarce inferior follower, the Author of 
" Guzman de Alfarache " — that some less knowing hand would 
prevent him by a spurious Second Part; and judging that it 
would be easier for his competitor to outbid him in the comi- 35 
calities, than in the romance, of his work, he abandoned his 

1 Yet from his Second Part, our cried-up pictures are mostly 
selected ; the waiting-women with beards, etc. 



284 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Knight, and has fairly set np the Squire for his Hero. For 
what else has he unsealed the eyes of Sancho ; and instead of 
that twilight state of semi -insanity — the madness at second- 
hand — the contagion, caught from a stronger mind infected — 

5 that war between native cunning, and hereditary deference, 
with which he has hitherto accompanied his master — two for 
a pair almost — does he substit^^te a downright Knave, with 
open eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed Mad- 
man; and offering at one time to lay, if not actually laying, 

10 hands upon him ! From the moment that Sancho loses his 
reverence, Don Quixote is become — a treatable lunatic. Our 
artists handle him accordingly. 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF 

AGE 

The Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of age, 
which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out 

15 of the old gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young 
spark but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all 
the Days in the year were invited. The Festivals, whom he 
deputed as his stewards, were mightily taken with the notion. 
They had been engaged time out of mind, they said, in pro- 

20 viding mirth and good cheer for mortals below ; and it was 
time they should have a taste of their own bounty. It was 
stiffly debated among them whether the Fasts should be ad- 
mitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, 
with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meet- 

25 ing. But the objection was overruled by Christmas Day, who 
had a design upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and a 
mighty desire to see how the old Domine would behave himself 
in his cups. Only the Vigils'^ were requested to come with 
their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night. 

30 All the Days came to their day. Covers were provided for 
three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal table ; with 
an occasional knife and fork at the side-board for the Twenty- 
Ninth of February. 



THE NEW YEARNS COMING OF AGE 285 

I should have told yon, that cards of invitation had been 
issued. The carriers were the Hours; twelve little, merry, 
whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went all 
ronnd, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the 
exception of Easter Day^ Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Move- 5 
ahles, who had lately shifted their quarters. 

Well, they all met at last — foul Days, fine Days, all sorts of 
Days, and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but. 
Hail ! fellow Day, well met — brother Day — sister Day, — 
only Lady Day^ kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat 10 
scornful. Yet some said Twelfth Day"^ cut her out and out, for 
she came in a tiffany suit, white and gold, like a queen on a 
frost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous° The rest 
came, some in green, some in white — but old Lent and his 
family were not yet out of mourning. Kainy Days came in, 15 
dripping; and sunshiny Days helped them to change their 
stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a 
little the worse for wear. Pay Day came late, as he always 
does; and Doomsday sent word — he might be expected. 

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself to 20 
marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would 
have posed old Erra Pater° to have found out any given Day 
in the year to erect a scheme upon — good Da?/."?, bad Days, 
were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober 
horoscopy. 25 

He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the Twenty- 
Second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole sid- 
ing a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as was 
concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord ! 
how he laid about him ! Nothing but barons° of beef and 30 
turkeys would go down with him — to the great greasing and 
detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still 
Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail- 
bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd, and protested there was no 
faith in dried ling,^ but commended it to the devil for a sour, 35 
windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and 
no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle 
of the great custard that stood before his left-hand neighbour, and 
daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would have 



286 ^ THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

taken him for the Last Day in December^ it so hung in 
icicles. 

At another part of the table. Shrove Tuesday was helping the 
Second of September to some cock broth, — which courtesy the 
5 latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant — so 
that there was no love lost for that matter. The Last of Lent 
was spunging^ upon Shrove -tide's pancakes; which April Fool 
perceiving, told him that he did well, for pancakes were proper 
to a good fry-day. 

10 In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth of Janu- 
ary, who, it seems, being a sour, puritanic character, that 
thought nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for him, had 
smuggled into the room a calf's head, which he had had cooked 
at home for that purpose, thinking to feast thereon incon- 

IStinently; but as it lay in the dish, March Manyweathers, who 
is a very fine lady, and subject to the meagrims,° screamed out 
there was a ^^ human head in the platter," and raved about 
Herodias' daughter to that degree, that the obnoxious viand 
was obliged to be removed ; nor did she recover her stomach 

20 till she had gulped down a Restorative,^ conf ected of Oak Apple ° 
which the merry Twenty-Ninthof May always carries about with 
him for that purpose. 

The King's health ^ being called for after this, a notable dis- 
pute arose between the Ticelfth of August (a zealous old Whig 

25 gentlewoman) and the Twenty-Third of April (a new-fangled 
lady of the Tory stam^p) as to which of them should have the 
honour to propose it. August grew hot upon the matter, affirm- 
ing time out of mind the prescriptive right to have lain with 
her, till her rival had basely supplanted her; whom she repre- 

30 sented as little better than a kept mistress, who went about in 
fine clothes, while she (the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely 
a rag, etc. 

April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right, in the 
strongest form of words, to the appellant, but decided for peace' 

35 sake, that the exercise of it should remain with the present 
possessor. At the same time, he slily rounded the first lady 
in the ear, that an action might lie against the Crown for 
bi-geny. 

1 Kiug George IV, 



THE NEW YEAR'^S COMING OF AGE 287 

It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas lustily 
bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days, who 
protested against burning daylight. Then fair water was 
handed round in silver ewers, and the same lady was observed 
to take an unusual time in Washing herself. 5 

May Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, in a 
neat speech proposing the health of the founder, crowned her 
goblet (and by her example the rest of the company) with 
garlands. This being done, the lordly New Year, from the 
upper end of the table, in a cordial but somewhat lofty tone, 10 
returned thanks. He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so 
many of his worthy father's late tenants, promised to improve 
their farms, and. at the same time to abate (if anything was 
found unreasonable) in their rents. 

At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days involuntarily 15 
looked at each other, and smiled ; April Fool whistled to an old 
tune of ^'New Brooms ; " and a surly old rebel at the farther 
end of the table (who was discovered to be no other than the 
Fifth of November)° muttered out, distinctly enough to be 
heard by the whole company, words to this effect — that " when 20 
the old one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which 
rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted his 
expulsion; and the malcontent was thrust out neck and heels 
into the cellar, as the properest place for such a boutefeu° and 
firebrand as he had shown himself to be. 25 

Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say truth, 
had been a little ruffled, and put beside his oratory) in as few, 
and yet as obliging words as possible, assured them of entire 
welcome; and, with a graceful turn, singling out poor Ttventy- 
Ninth of February, that had sate all this while mumchance° at 30 
the side-board, begged to couple his health with that of the 
good company before him — which he drank accordingly ; 
observing, that he had not seen his honest face any time 
these four years, with a number of endearing expressions 
besides. At the same time removing the solitary Day from 35 
the forlorn seat which had been assigned him, he stationed him 
at his own board, somewhere between the Greek Calends and 
Latter Lammas. 

Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song, wdth his 



288 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he had 
swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol, which 
Christmas Day had taught him for the nonce°; and was fol- 
lowed by the latter, who gave " Miserere " in fine style, hitting 
5 off the mumping notes and lengthened drawl of Old Mortifica- 
tion with infinite humour. April Fool swore they had ex- 
changed conditions; but Good Friday was observed to look 
extremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan before her face that 
she might not be seen to smile. 
10 Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool, next joined in 
a glee — 

Which is the proper est day to drink ? 

in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry burden. 

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The question 

15 being proposed, who had the greatest number of followers — 
the Quarter Days said, there could be no question as to that ; 
for they had all the creditors in the world dogging their heels. 
But April Fool gave it in favour of the Forty Days before Easter; 
because the debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and 

20 they kept Lent all the year. 

All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty May, who 
sate next him, slipping amorous billets-doux under the table, till 
the Dog Days (who are naturally of a warm constitution) began 
to be jealous, and to bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool, 

25 who likes a bit of sport above measure, and had some preten- 
sions to the lady besides, as being but a cousin once removed, 
— clapped and halloo'd them on; and as fast as their indigna- 
tion cooled, those mad wags, the Ember Days,° were at it with 
their bellows, to blow it into a flame ; and all was in a ferment, 

30 till old Madam Septiiagesima° (who boasts herself the Mother of 
the Days) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious tale 
of the lovers which she could reckon when she was young, and 
of one Master Rogation Day^ in particular, who was for ever put- 
ting the question to her ; but she kept him at a distance, as the 

35 chronicle would tell — by which I apprehend she meant the Al- 
manack. Then she rambled on to the Days that ivere gone, the 
good old Days, and so to the Days before the Flood — which 



THE WEDDING 289 

plainly showed her old head to be little better than crazed and 
doited. 

Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks and great- 
coats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor's Day went off in a 
Mist, as usual ; Shortest Day in a deep black Fog, that wrapt 5 
the little gentleman all round like a hedgehog. Two Vigils — 
so watchmen are called in heaven — saw Christmas Day safe 
home — they had been used to the business before. Another 
Vigil — a stout, sturdy patrole, called the Eve of St. Christopher 
— seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he 10 
should be — e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back 
fashion, and Old Mortification went floating home singing — 

On the bat's back do I fly, 

and a number of old snatches besides, between drunk and sober, 
but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were 15 
among them. Longest Day set off westward in beautiful crim- 
son and gold — the rest, some in one fashion, some in another ; 
but Valentine and pretty May took their departure together in 
one of the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish 
to set in. 20 



THE WEDDING 

I DO not know when I have been better pleased than at being 
invited last week to be present at the wedding of a friend's 
daughter. I like to make one at these ceremonies, which to us 
old people give back our youth in a manner, and restore our 
gayest season, in the remembrance of our own success, or the 25 
regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappoint- 
ments, in this point of a settlement. On these occasions I am 
sure to be in good humour for a week or two after, and enjoy a 
reflected honeymoon. Being without a family, I am flattered 
with these temporary adoptions into a friend's family; I feel a 30 
sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted 
into degrees of affinity ; and, in the participated socialities of 
the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary 



290 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly 
to be left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a 
dear friend. But to my subject. — 

The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration had 
5 been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state of suspense 
in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the bride's 
father had unhappily contracted upon the subject of the too 
early marriages of females. He has been lecturing any time 
these five years — for to that length the courtship has been pro- 

lOtracted — upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity, till 
the lady should have completed her five and twentieth year. 
We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had abated 
of none of its ardours, might at last be lingered on, till passion 
had time to cool, and love go out in the experiment. But a 

15 little wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no means 
a party to these overstrained notions, joined to some serious 
expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing 
infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves 
many years enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to 

20 bring matters to a conclusion daring his lifetime, at length pre-^ 
vailed; and on Monday last the daughter of my old friend. 

Admiral , having attained the womanly age of nineteen, 

was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin J , who 

told some few years older. 

25 Before the youthful part of my female readers express their 
indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned to the 
lovers by the preposterous notions of my old friend, they will 
do well to consider the reluctance which a fond parent naturally 
feels at parting with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, 

30 in most cases may be traced the difference of opinion on this 
point between child and parent, whatever pretences of interest 
or prudence may be held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness 
of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving 
topic ; but is there not something untender, to say no more of 

35 it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear 
herself from the paternal stock, and commit herself to strange 
graftings? The case is heightened where the lady, as in the 
present instance, happens to be an only child. I do not under- i 
stand these matters experimentally, but 1 can make a shrewd I 



THE WEDDING 291 

guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. 
It is no new observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases 
has no rival so much to be feared as the father. Certainly 
there is a jealousy in unparallel subjects, which is little less . 
heartrending than the passion which we more strictly christen 5 
by that name. Mothers* scruples are more easily got over ; for 
this reason, I suppose, that the protection transferred to a hus- 
band is less a derogation and a loss to their authority than to 
the paternal. Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, 
which paints the inconveniences (impossible to be conceived in 10 
the same degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn celi- 
bacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon 
their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here than the 
cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this instinct 
may be imputed, and by it alone maybe excused, the un beseem- 15 
ing artifices, by which some wives push on the matrimonial 
projects of their daughters, which the husband, however approv- 
ing, shall entertain with comparative indifference. A little 
shamelessness on this head is pardonable. With this explana- 
tion, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal importunity 20 
receives the name of a virtue. — But the parson stays, while I 
preposterously assume his office ; I am preaching, while the 
bride is on the threshold. 

Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage 
reflections which have just escaped me have the obliquest ten- 25 
dency of application to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is 
about to venture upon a change in her condition, at a mature 
and competent age, and not without the fullest approbation of 
all parties. I only deprecate very hasty marriages. 

It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone through 30 
at an early hour, to give time for a little dejeune afterwards, to 
which a select party of friends had been invited. We were in 
church a little before the clock struck eight. 

Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress 
of the bride-maids — the three charming Miss Foresters — on 35 
this morning. To give the bride an opportunity of shining 
singly, they had come habited all in green. I am ill at de- 
scribing female apparel ; but while she stood at the altar in 
vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial white- 



292 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

ness, they assisted in robes such as might become Diana's® 
nymphs — Foresters indeed — as such who had not yet come 
to the resolution of putting oft' cold virginity. These young 

, maids, not being so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, 
5 keep single for their father's sake, and live altogether so happy 
with their remaining parent, that the hearts of their lovers are 
ever broken with the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) 
of such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gallant 
girls ! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia ° ! 

10 I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn 

places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable disposition to 

. levity upon the most awful occasions. I was never cut out for 

a public functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken hands ; 

bat I could not resist the importunities of the young lady's 

15 father, whose gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as 
parent on this occasion, and give away the bride. Something 
ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of all moments — 
a sense of my unfitness to have the disposal, even in imagina- 
nation, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear I was 

20 betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson — 
and the rector's eye of St. Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle 
of a rebuke — was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient 
jest to the tristful severities of a funeral. 

This is the only misbehaviour which I can plead to upon 

25 this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to me after the 

ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss T s, be accounted 

a solecism. She was pleased to say that she had never seen a 
gentleman before me give away a bride, in black. Now black 
has been my ordinary apparel so long — indeed I take it to be 

30 the proper costume of an author — the stage sanctions it — 
that to have appeared in some lighter colour would have raised 
more mirth at my expense than the anomaly had created 
censure. But I could perceive that the. bride's mother, and 
some elderly ladies present (God bless them ! ) would have 

35 been well content, if I had come in any other colour than that. 
But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I remem- 
bered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of all the birds 
being invited to the linnet's wedding, at which, when all the 
rest came in their gay6st feathers, the raven alone apologized 



THE WEDDING 293 

for his cloak because " he had no other." This tolerably recon- 
ciled the elders. But with the young people all was merri- 
ment, and shaking of hands, and congratulations, and kissing 
away the bride's tears, and kissing from her in return, till a 
young lady, who assumed some experience in these matters, 5 
having worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer 
than her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an eye 
upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would have " none 
left." 

My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle on this 10 
occasion — a striking contrast to his usual neglect of personal 
appearance. He did not once shove up his borrowed locks 
(his custom ever at his morning studies) to betray the few gray 
stragglers of his own beneath them. He wore an aspect of 
thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the hour, which at 15 
length approached, when after a protracted breakfast of three 
hours — if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried 
fruits, wines, cordials, etc., can deserve so meagre an appella- 
tion — the coach was announced, which was come to carry off 
the bride and bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly 20 
ordained, into the country ; upon which design, wishing them 
a felicitous journey, let us return to the assembled guests. 

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 

The eyes of men 

Are idly bent on him that enters next, 25 

so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the chief 
performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. None told 
his tale. None sipt her glass. The poor Admiral made an 
effort — it was not much. I had anticipated so far. Even the 
infinity of full Satisfaction, that had betrayed itself through 30 
the prim looks and quiet deportment of his lady, began to wane 
into something of misgiving. No one knew whether to take 
their leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occa- 
sion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do 
justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise like toss 
have brought me into disgrace in the fore-part of the day; 
I mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking and giving vent 
to all manner of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma 



294 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I found it sovereign. I rattled off some of my most excellent 
absurdities. All were willing to be relieved, at any expense of 
reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum which had 
succeeded to the morning bustle. By this means I was fortu- 
5 nate in keeping together the better part of the company to a 
late hour ; and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite 
game) with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which 
came opportunely on his side — lengthened out till midnight — 
dismissed the old gentleman at last to his bed with comparatively 

10 easy spirits. 

I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not 
know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at his 
ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the result of con- 
fusion. Everybody is at cross purposes, yet the effect is so much 

15 better than uniformity. Contradictory orders ; servants pulling 
one way ; master and mistress driving some other, yet both 
diverse ; visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsymmetrized ; 
candles disposed by chance ; meals at odd hours, tea and supper 
at once, or the latter preceding the former ; the host and the 

20 guest conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each under- 
standing himself, neither trying to understand or hear the other; 
draughts and politics, chess and political economy, cards and 
conversation on nautical matters, going on at once, without the 
hope, or indeed the wish, of distinguishing them, make it alto- 

25 gether the most perfect concordia discors you shall meet with. 
Yet somehow the old house is not quite what it should be. The 
Admiral still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill 
it for him. The instrument stands where it stood, but she is 
gone, whose delicate touch could sometimes for a short minute 

30 appease the warring elements. He has learnt, as Marvel ex- 
presses it, to " make his destiny his choice." He bears bravely 
up, but he does not come out with his flashes of wild wit so 
thick as formerly. His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His 
wife, too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold 

35 and set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is wonder- 
ful how one young maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the 
paternal roof. Old and young seem to have an interest in her, 
so long as she is not absolutely disposed of. The youthfulness 
of the house is flown. Emilv is married. 



THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM 295 



THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM 

I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of 
a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I had been 
reading the " Loves of the Angels,°" and went to bed with my 
head full of speculations, suggested by that extraordinary 
legend. It had given birth to innumerable conjectures; and, 1 5 
remember, the last waking thought, which I gave expression to 
on my pillow, was a sort of wonder, " what could come of it." 

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely 
make out — but to some celestial region. It was not the real 
heavens neither — not the downright Bible heaven — but a 10 
kind of fairyland heaven, about which a poor human fancy 
may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without 
presumption. 

Methought — what wild things dreams are ! — I was present 

— at what would you imagine ? — at an angel's gossiping.^ 15 
Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or 

whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I 
know — but there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its cloudy swad- 
dling-bands—a Child Angel. 

Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the celestial napery 20 
of what seemed its prince Jy cradle. All the winged orders 
hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its 
yet closed eyes ; which, when it did, first one, and then the 
other — with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, 
stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, 25 
but as if to explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces 

— what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not celestial 
visages! Nor wanted there to my seeming — O the inexplica- 
ble simpleness of dreams ! — bowls of that cheering nectar, 

— which mortals caudle call below. 30 

Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, — stricken in 
years, as it might seem, — so dexterous were those heavenly 
attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet 
with terrestrial child-rites the young present, which earth had 
made to heaven. 35 



296 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony j 
those by which the spheres are tutored ; but, as loudest instru- 
ments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled ; so to accommodate | 
their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. 
5 And, with the noise of these subdued soundings, the Angelet 
sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions — but forth- 
with flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full- 
winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years 
went round in heaven — a year in dreams is as a day — continn-J 

10 ally its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but wanting | 
the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, j 
and fell fluttering — still caught by angel hands for ever to put \ 
forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of 
the unmixed vigour of heaven. 

15 And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be j 
called Ge- Urania,"^ because its production was of earth and] 
heaven. 

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption ^ 
into immortal palaces; but it was to know weakness, and reli- 

20ance, and the shadow of human imbecility; and it went with] 
a lame gait ; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children I 
in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic i 
bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the 
sight of the immortal lame one. 

25 And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with 
pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back their 
bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, school- 
ing them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their 
lessons to the gradual iUuraination (as must needs be) of the 

30 half -earth-born ; and what intuitive notices they could not 
repel (by reason that their nature is, to know all things at 
once), the half-heavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, 
aspired to receive into its understanding ; so that Humility and 
Aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction of the glori- 

35 ous Amphibium. 

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe 
the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to? 
be a child for ever. 

And because the human part of it might not press into the 



A DEATH-BED 297 

heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full- 
natured angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the palace, 
where were shady groves and rivulets, like this green earth from 
which it came ; so Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon 
the entertainment of the new-adopted. 5 

And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is noth- 
ing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and 
is the Tutelar Genius° of Childhood upon earth, and still goes 
lame and lovely. 

By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting by the 10 
grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a 
Child ; but not the same which I saw in heaven. A mournful 
hue overcasts its lineaments ; nevertheless, a correspondency is 
between the child by the grave, and that celestial orphan, whom 
I saw above ; and the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly, 15 
is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the 
terrestrial. And this correspondency is not to be understood 
but by dreams. 

And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that 
once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal 20 
passion, up springing on the wings of parental love (such power 
had parental love for a moment to suspend the else-irrevocable 
law) appeared for a brief instant in his station ; and, depositing 
a wondrous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces 
knew him no more. And this charge was the self-same Babe, 25 
who goeth lame and lovely — but Adah sleepeth by the river 
Pison. 



A DEATH-BED 

IN A LETTER TO R. H. ESQR. OF B 

I CALLED upon you this morning and found that you were 
gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. 
Poor N. R.° has lain dying now for almost a week ; such is the 30 
penalty we pay for having enjoyed through life a strong con- 
stitution. Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether 
he saw me through his poor glazed eyes ; but the group I saw 



298 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were 
assembled his wife, their two daughters, and poor deaf Robert, 
looking doubly stupefied. 

There they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the 
5 week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. R. Speaking was 
impossible in that mute chamber. By this time it must be 
all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot 
make up. He was my friend, and my father's friend, for all 
the life that I can remember. I seem to have made foolish 

10 friendships since. Those are the friendships, which outlast a 
second generation. Old as I am getting, in his eyes I was still 
the child he knew me. To the last he called me Jemmy. ° I 
have none to call me Jemmy now. He was the last link that 
bound me to B .° You are but of yesterday. In him I seem 

15 to have lost the old plainness of manners and singleness of 
heart. Lettered he was not; his reading scarce exceeded the 
Obituary of the Old Gentleman's Magazine, to which he has 
never failed of having recourse for these last fifty years. Yet 
there was the pride of literature about him from that slender 

20 perusal ; and moreover from his office of archive-keeper to your 
ancient city — in which he must needs pick up some equivocal 
Latin, which among his less literary friends assumed the air of 
a very pleasant pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with 
which, having tried to puzzle out the text of a Black-lettered 

25 Chaucer in your Corporation Library, to which he was a sort 
of Librarian, he gave it up with this consolatory reflection : — 
"Jemmy," said he, " I do not know what you find in these very 
old books, but I observe, there is a deal of very indifferent 
spelling in them." His jokes (for he had some) are ended; 

30 but they were old Perennials, staple, and always as good as 
new. He had one Song, that spake of the " flat bottoms of our 
foes coming over in darkness," and alluded to a threatened In- 
vasion, many years since blown over; this he reserved to be 
sung on Christmas Night, which we always passed with him, 

35 and he sang it with the freshness of an impending event. How 
his eyes would sparkle when he came to the passage : — 

We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat, 
In spite of the devil and Brussels' Gazette. 



OLD CHIJSrA 299 

What is the Brussels' Gazette now ? I cry, while I endite 
these trifles. His poor girls who are, I believe, compact of 
solid goodness, will have to receive their afflicted mother at an 

unsuccessful home in a petty village in shire, where for 

years they have been struggling to raise a Girls' School with no 5 
effect. Poor deaf Robert (and the less hopeful for being so) is 
thrown upon a deaf world, without the comfort to his father on 
his death-bed of knowing him provided for. They are left 
almost provisionless. Some life assurance there is ; but, I fear, 

not exceeding . Their hopes must be from your Corpora- 10 

tion, which their father has served for fifty years. Who or 
what are your Leading Members now, I know not. Is there 
any to whom without impertinence, you can represent the true 
circumstances of the family ? You cannot say good enough of 
poor K., and his poor wife. Oblige me and the dead, if you 15 
can. 



OLD CHINA 



I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When 
I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet, and 
next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order of pref- 
erence, but by saying that we have all some taste or other, of 
too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that 20 
it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and 
the first exhibition, that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious 
of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my 
imagination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now have? — to 25 
those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, under the 
notion of men and women, float about, uncircum scribed by any 
element, in that world before perspective — a china tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot diminish 
— figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on 30 
terra jirma still — for so we must in courtesy interpret that 
speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent 
absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals. 



300 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if pos- 
sible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady 
from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems to set 
5 off respect ! And here the same lady, or another — for likeness 
is identity on tea-cups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, 
moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a 
dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as 
angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst 

10 of a flowery mead — a furlong off on tha other side of the same 
strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their world 
— see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.° 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant,° and coextensive — so 

15 objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine 
Cathay.° 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson 
(which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of 
an afternoon), some of these speciosa miracula° upon a set of 

20 extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we 
were now for the first time using ; and could not help remark- 
ing, how favourable circumstances had been to us of late years, 
that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of 
this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the 

25 brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer 
clouds° in Bridget. 

"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, 
" when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want 
to be poor; but there was a middle state'' — so she was pleased 

30 to ramble on, — " in which I am sure we were a great deal 
happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have 
money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. 
When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had 
to get you to consent in those times !), we were used to have a 

35 debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and 
against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what 
saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A 
thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we 
paid for it. 



OLD CHINA 301 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang 
upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so 
threadbare — and all because of that folio Beaumont and 
Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's 
in Covent-garden ? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks 5 
before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had 
not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the 
Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you 
should he too late — and when the old bookseller with some 
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he 10 
was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treas- 
ures — and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as 
cumbersome — and when you presented it to me — and when 
we were exploring the perfectness of it {collating you called it) 

— and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, 15 
which your impatience would not suifer to be left till daybreak 

— was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat 
black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep 
brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half 
the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that over- 20 
worn suit — your old corbeau° — for four or five weeks longer 
than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the 
mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was it? — a great 
affair we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old 
folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, 25 
but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old 
purchases now. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out 
a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, 
which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; ' when you looked at 30 
the purchase, and thought of the money — and thought of the 
money, and looked again at the picture — was there no pleasure 
in being a poor man ? Now, you have nothing to do but to 
walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos.'^ Yet 
do you ? 35 

»' Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and 
Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a holyday — holydays 
and all other fun are gone now we are rich — and the little 
handbasket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savoury 



302 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

cold lamb and salad — and how you would pry about at noon- 
tide for some decent house, where we might go in and produce 
our store — only paying for the ale that you must call for — 
and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she 
5 was likely to allow us a tablecloth — and wish for such another 
honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one on 
the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing — and 
sometimes they would ]3rove obliging enough, and sometimes 
they would look grudgingly upon us — but we had cheerful looks 

10 still for one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, 
scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now — when we 
go out for a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we 
ride part of the way and go into a fine inn, and order the best 
of dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, 

15 never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when 
we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious 
welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the 
pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we 

20 saw the battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and 
Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood° — 
when we squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four 
times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt 
all the time that you ought not to have brought me — and 

25 more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me — 
and the pleasure was the better for a little shame — and when 
the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, 
or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts 
were with Rosalind in Arden,° or with Viola at the Court of 

30 Illyria° ? You used to say that the gallery was the best place 
of all for enjoying a play socially — that the relish of such 
exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going 
— that the company we met there, not being in general readers 
of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to 

35 what was going on, on the stage — because a word lost would 
have been a chasm, which it w^as impossible for them to fill up. 
With such reflections we consoled our pride then — and I 
appeal to you whethei-, as a woman, I met generally with less 
attention and accommodation than I have done since in more 



OLD CHINA 303 

expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and 
the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, 

— but there was still a law of civility to woman recognized to 
quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages 

— and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snugs 
seat, and the play, afterwards ! JSTow^ we can only pay bur 
money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries 
now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — 
but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they 10 
became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they 
were yet dear — to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What 
treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now — 
that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be 
selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that w^e allow 15 
ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes 
what I call a treat — when two people living together, as we 
have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, 
which both like ; while each apologizes, and is willing to take 
both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in 20 
people making much of themselves in that sense of the word. 
It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But 
now — what I mean by the word — we never do make much of 
ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the 
veriest poor of all, but persons as w^e w^ere, just above poverty. 25 

" I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, — and much 
ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to 
account for our exceedings — many a long face did you make 
over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how 30 
we had spent so much — or that we had not spent so much — or 
that it was impossible we should spend so much next year — and 
still we found our slender capital decreasing — but then, betwixt 
ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and 
talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for th,e 35 
future — and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits 
(in which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our 
loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to 
quote it out of hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him). 



304 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

we used to welcome in the * coming guest.' Xow we have 
no reckoning at all at the end of the old year — no flattering 
promises about the new year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that 
5 when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I inter- 
rupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of 
wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a 

clear income of poor hundred pounds a year. " It is true 

we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, 

10 my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if 
we were to shake the superflux° into the sea, we should not 
much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, 
as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. 
It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never 

15 have been what we have been to each other, if we had always 
had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting 
power — those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, w^hich cir- 
cumstances cannot straiten — with us are long since passed away. 
Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement 

20 indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, 
where we formerly walked : live better, and lie softer — and 
shall be wise to do so — than we had means to do in 
those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days 
return — could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a 

25 day — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you 
and I be young to see them — could the good old one-shilling 
gallery days return — they are dreams, my cousin, now — but 
could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, 
by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa — 

30 be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, 
pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble 
of poor gallery scramblers — could I once more hear those 
anxious shrieks of yours — and the delicious Thank God, we are 
safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, 

35 let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath 
us — I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so 
deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus° 

had, or the great Jew R ° is supposed to have, to purchase 

it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter 



POPULAR FALLACIES 305 

holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head 
of that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that 
very blue summer-house. 



POPULAR FALLACIES 



THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD 

This axiom contains a principle of compensation, which dis- 
poses us to admit the truth of it. But there is no safe trusting 5 
to dictionaries and definitions. We should more willingly fall 
in with this popular language, if we did not find brutality some- 
times awkwardly coupled with valour in the same vocabulary. 
The comic writers, with their poetical justice, have contributed 
not a little to mislead us upon this point. To see a hectoring lO 
fellow exposed and beaten upon the stage, has something in it 
wonderfully diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits 
is notoriously low and defective. It has not strength to raise a 
vapour, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These 
love to be told that huffing is no part of valour. The truest 15 
courage with them is that which is the least noisy and 
obtrusive. But confront one of these silent heroes with the 
swaggerer of real life, and his confidence in the theory quickly 
vanishes. Pretensions do not uniformly bespeak non-perfor- 
mance. A modest, inoffensive deportment does not necessarily 20 
imply valour ; neither does the absence of it justify us in deny- 
ing that quality. Hickman° wanted modesty — we do not mean 
him of Clarissa — but who ever doubted his courage? Even 
the poets — upon whom this equitable distribution of qualities 
should be most binding — have thought it agreeable to nature 25 
to depart from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in the 
" Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the received notions. 
Milton has made him at once a blusterer, a giant, and a das- 
tard. But Almanzor, in Dry den, ° talks of driving armies singly 
before him — and does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder insight 30 
into this kind of character than either of his predecessors. He 



306 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero a sort of 
dimidiate pre-eminence: — '^ Bully Dawson kicked by half the 
town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson.'* This was 
true distributive justice. 

II 

THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS 

5 The weakest part of mankind have this saying commonest in 
their mouth. It is the trite consolation administered to the 
easy dupe, when he has been tricked out of his money or estate, 
that the acquisition of it will do the owner no good. But the 
rogues of this world — the prudenter part of them at least, — 

10 know better ; and if the observation had been as true as it is 
old, would not have failed by this time to have discovered it. 
They have pretty sharp distinctions of the fluctuating and the 
permanent. " Lightly come, lightly go," is a proverb which 
they can very well afford to leave, when they leave little 

15 else, to the losers. They do not always find manors, got by 
rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt away as the poets will 
have it ; or that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from the 
thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, alienated to lay uses, 
was formerly denounced to have this slippery quality. But 

20 some portions of it somehow always stuck so fast, that the 
denunciators have been fain to postpone the prophecy of 
refundment to a late posterity. 



THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST 

The severest exaction surely ever invented upon the self-denial 
of poor human nature ! This is to expect a gentleman to give 

25 a treat without partaking of it; to sit esurient at his own table, 
and commend the flavour of his venison upon the absurd 
strength of his never touching it himself. On the contrary, we 
love to see a wag taste his own joke to his party ; to watch a 
quirk or a merry conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds 

30 before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and 



POPULAR FALLACIES 307 

racy — begotten of the occasion ; if he that utters it never 
thought it before, he is naturally the first to be tickled with it, 
and any suppression of such complacence we hold to be chui'lish 
and insulting. What does it seem to imply but that your com- 
pany is weak or foolish enough to be moved by an image or a 5 
fancy, that shall stir you not at all, or but faintly? This is 
exactly the humour of the fine gentleman in Mandeville, who, 
while he dazzles his guests with the display of some costly toy, 
affects himself to " see nothing considerable in it." 

IV 

THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. — THAT IT IS EASY 
TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN 

A SPEECH from the poorer sort of people, which always indi- 10 
cates that the party vituperated is a gentleman. The very fact 
which they deny, is that which galls and exasperates them to 
use this language. The forbearance with which it is usually 
received is a proof what interpi-etation the bystander sets upon 
it. Of a kin to this, and still less politic, are the phrases with 15 
which, in their street rhetoric, they ply one another more 

grossly : — He is a poor creature. — He has not a rag to cover 

etc. ; though this last, we confess, is more frequently applied 
by females to females. They do not perceive that the satire 
glances upon themselves. A poor man, of all things in the 20 
world, should not upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are 
there no other topics — as, to tell him his father was hanged 
— his sister, etc. — , without exposing a secret which should 
be kept snug between them ; and doing an affront to the 
order to which they have the honour equally to belong? All 25 
this while they do not see how the wealthier man stands by and 
laughs in his sleeve at both. 

V 
THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH 

A SMOOTH text to the latter ; and, preached from the pulpit, 
is sure of a docile audience from the pews lined with satin. It 



308 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be told that 
he — and not perverse nature, as the homilies would make us 
imagine — is the true cause of all the irregularities in his parish. 
This is striking at the root of free-w^ill indeed, and denying the 
5 originality of sin in any sense. But men are not such implicit 
sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the 
part of the upper classes is to derive itself from no higher prin- 
ciple than the aj)prehension of setting ill patterns to the lower, 
we beg leave to discharge them from all squearnishness on that 

10 score : they may even take their fill of pleasures, where they can 
find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered and straitened 
as it is, is not so barren of invention but it can trade upon the 
staple of its own vice, without drawing upon their capital. 
The poor are not quite such servile imitators as they take them 

15 for. Some of them are very clever artists in their way. Here 
and there we find an original. Who taught the poor to steal, 
to pilfer? They did not go to the great for schoolmasters 
in these faculties surely. It is well if in some vices they 
allow us to be — no copyists. In no other sense is it true that 

20 the poor copy them, than as servants ma}^ be said to take after 
their masters and mistresses, when they succeed to their re- 
versionary cold meats. If the master, from indisposition, or some 
other cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwithstanding. 
" O, but (some will say) the force of example is great." We 

25 knew a lady who was so scrupulous on this head, that she would 
put up with the calls of the most impertinent visitor, rather 
than let her servant say she was not at home, for fear of teaching 
her maid to tell an untruth ; and this in the very face of the 
fact, which she knew well enough, that the wench was one of 

30 the greatest liars upon the earth without teaching ; so much so, 
that her mistress possibly never heard two words of consecutive 
truth from her in her life. But nature must go for nothing ; 
example must be everything. This liar in grain, who never 
opened her mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a re- 

35 mote inference, which she (pretty casuist !) might possibly 
draw from a form of words — literally false, but essentially de- 
ceiving no one — that under some circumstances a fib might not 
be so exceedingly sinful — a fiction, too, not at all in her own way, 
or one that she could be suspected of adopting, for few servant- 

40 wenches care to be denied to visitors. 



POPULAR FALLACIES 309 

This word example reminds us of another fine word which is 
in use upon these occasions — e7icourageme7it. " People in our 
sphere must not be thought to give encouragement to such pro- 
ceedings." To such a frantic height is this principle capable 
of being carried, that we have known individuals w^ho have 5 
thought it within the scope of their influence to sanction 
despair, and give eclat to — suicide. A domestic in the family 
of a county member lately deceased, for love, or some unknown 
cause, cut his throat, but not successfully. The poor fellow 
was otherwise much loved and respected ; and great interest 10 
was used in his behalf, upon his recovery, that he might be 
permitted to retain his place; his word being first pledged, not 
without some substantial sponsors to promise for him, that the 
like should never happen again. His master was inclinable to 
keep him, but his mistress thought otherwise ; and John in the 15 
end was dismissed, her ladyship declaring that she " could not 
think of encouraging any such doings in the county." 

VI 
THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST 

Not a man, woman, or child in ten miles round Guild-hall, 
who really believes this saying. The inventor of it did not 
believe it himself. It was made in revenge by somebody, who 20 
was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton 
sophism ; a lie palmed upon the palate, which knows better 
things. If nothing else could be said for a feast, this is sufli- 
cient, that from the superflux there is usually something left 
for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of 25 
proverbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue money. 
Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is not 
health ; riches cannot purchase everything : the metaphor which 
makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces 
fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the 30 
unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase 
which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry so barefaced, that 
even the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, 
and abundance of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate con- 



310 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

tent, we verily believe to have been the invention of some cun- 
ning borrower, who had designs upon the purse of his w^ealthier 
neighbour, which he could only hope to carry by force of these 
verbal juggiings. Translate any one of these sayings out of 
5 the artful metonymy which envelopes it, and the trick is ap- 
parent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating- 
cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign 
countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to him- 
self, are not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalise 
10 with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for 



OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE 

WRONG 

Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite conclu- 
sion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ; but warmth and 
earnestness are a proof at least of a man's own conviction of the 

15 rectitude of that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the 
result of an unprincipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as 
of a sober confidence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing 
is more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this philo- 
sophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stammering la.w- 

20 stationer in Lincoln's Inn — we have seldom known this shrewd 
little fellow engaged in an argument where we were not convinced 
he had the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have sec- 
onded him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken 
sense for an hour together, writhing and labouring to be de- 

25 livered of the point of dispute — the very gist of the contro- 
versy knocking at his teeth, which like some obstinate 
iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance — his puny frame 
convulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfairness in the 
logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it has moved our 

30 gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that cared 
not a button for the merits of the question, by merely laying 
his hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him to be 
calm (your tall disputants have always the advantage), with a 



POPULAR FALLACIES 311 

provoking sneer carry the argument clean from him in the 
opinion of all the bystanders, who have gone away clearly con- 
vinced that Titubus must have been in the wrong, because he 

was in a passion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, is 

one of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dispas- 5 
sionate arguers breathing. 

VIII 

THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY 
WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION 

The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions. A 
custom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner as a 
pun. What would become of a great part of the wit of the 
last age, if it were tried by this test? How would certain 10 
topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Terentian 
auditory, though Terence himself had been alive to translate 
them? Senator iirbanus with Curruca to boot for a synonym, 
would but faintly have done the business. Words, involving 
notions, are hard enough to render ; it is too much to expect us 15 
to translate a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle. 
The Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting 
harmonious sounds in another language for it. To Latinise a 
pun, we must seek a pun in Latin that will answer to it ; as, to 
give an idea of the double endings in Hubibras,° we must have 20 
recourse to a similar practice in the old monkish doggerel. 
Dennis, the fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern 
times, professes himself highly tickled with the "a stick," 
chiming to " ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, 
I verbal consonance ? 25 

IX 
THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST 

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and start- 
ing, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which 
imit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather 
o tickle the intellect. It is an antic which does not stand upon 



310 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



1 

cun-1 

Lthierl 



tent, we verily believe to have been the invention of some 
ning borrower, w^ho had designs upon the purse of his w^ealthierl 
neighbour, which he could only hope to carry by force of these 
verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of 
5 the artful metonymy which envelopes it, and the trick is ap- 
parent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating 
cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign ■ 
countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to him- ■ 
self, are not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalise 
10 with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for 



OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMP:ST IS GENERALLY IN THE 

WRONG 

Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite conclu- 
sion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ; but warmth and 
earnestness are a proof at least of a man's own conviction of the 

15 rectitude of that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the 
result of an unprincipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as 
of a sober confidence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing 
is more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this philo- 
sophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stammering law- 

20 stationer in Lincoln's Inn — we have seldom known this shrewd 
little fellow engaged in an argument where we were not convinced 
he had the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have sec- 
onded him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken 
sense for an hour together, writhing and labouring to be de- 

25 livered of the point of dispute — the very gist of the contro- 
versy knocking at his teeth, which like some obstinate 
iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance — his puny frame 
convulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfairness in the 
logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it has moved our 

30 gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that cared 
not a button for the merits of the question, by merely laying 
his hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him to be 
calm (your tall disputants have always the advantage), with a 



POPULAR FALLACIES 311 

provoking sneer carry the argument clean from him in the 
opinion of all the bystanders, who have gone away clearly con- 
vinced that Titubus must have been in the wrong, because he 

was in a passion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, is 

one of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dispas- 5 
sionate arguers breathing. 



THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY 
WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION 

The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions. A 
custom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner as a 
pun. What would become of a great part of the wit of the 
last age, if it were tried by this test ? How would certain 10 
topics, as alder manity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Terentian 
auditory, though Terence himself had been alive to translate 
them? Senator urbanus with Curruca to boot for a synonym, 
would but faintly have done the business. Words, involving 
notions, are hard enough to render ; it is too much to expect us 15 
to translate a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle. 
The Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting 
harmonious sounds in another language for it. To Latinise a 
pun, we must seek a pun in Latin that will answer to it ; as, to 
give an idea of the double endings in Hubibras,° we must have 20 
recourse to a similar practice in the old monkish doggerel. 
Dennis, the fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern 
times, professes himself highly tickled with the "a stick," 
chiming to " ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, 
a verbal consonance ? 25 

IX 

THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST 

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and start- 
ling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which 
limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear ; not a feather 
to tickle the intellect. It is an antic which does not stand upon 



312 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

manners, but comes bounding into the presence, and does not 
show the less comic for being dragged in sometimes by the 
head and shoulders. What though it limp a little, or prove 
defective in one leg — all the better. A pun may easily be too 

5 curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been 
at a party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender in that 
line), where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious con- 
ceits, every man contributing his shot, and some there the 
most expert shooters of the day; after making a poor word 

10 ran the gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; after hunting and 
winding it through all the possible ambages of similar sounds ; 
after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, till the very 
milk of it will not yield a drop further, — suddenly some 
obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice 

15 to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as 
we do by a known poor man when a money-subscription is 
going round, no one calling upon him for his quota — has all at 
once come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; 
so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied ; 

20 so exquisitely good, and so deplorably bad, at the same time, 
— that it has proved a Robin Hood's shot ; anything ulterior 
to that is despaired of ; and the party breaks up, unanimously 
voting it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the even- 
ing. This species of wit is the better for not being perfect in 

25 all its parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in natural- 
ness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it 
has upon some other faculties. The puns which are most 
entertaining are those which will least bear an analysis. Of 
this kind is the following, recorded, with a sort of stigma, in 

30 one of Swift's Miscellanies. 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a 
hare through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary 
question : " Prithee, friend, is that thy own hair or a wig ? " 
There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man might 

35 blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defence of it against a 
critic who should be laughter-proof. The quibble in itself is 
not considerable. It is only a new turn given, by a little false 
pronunciation, to a very common though not very courteous 
inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner-party, 



POPULAR FALLACIES 313 

it would have been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it 
would have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take 
ill the totality of time, place, and person ; the pert look of the 
inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled porter : 
the one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying on with his 5 
burthen ; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the 
first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable 
irrelevancy of the second; the place — a public street, not 
favourable to frivolous investigations ; the affrontive quality of 
the primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously trans- 10 
f erred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the 
implied satire ; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to 
eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most 
countries considered rather as the temporary trustees than 
owners of such dainties, — which the fellow was beginning to 15 
understand ; but then the loig again comes in, and he can make 
nothing of it : all put together constitute a picture : Hogarth^ 
could have made it intelligible on canvas. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad 
pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, 20 
which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The 
same persons shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from 
Yirgil about the broken Cremona ; ^ because it is made out in 
all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We ven- 
ture to call it cold ; because, of thousands who have admired it, 25 
it would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. 
As appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty 
aside), we must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. 
But as some stories are said to be too good to be true, it may 
with equal truth be asserted of this bi-verbal allusion, that it is 30 
too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the 
incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been 
better had it been less perfect. Like some Yirgilian hemistichs, 
it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in 
conscience ; the CremoncB afterwards loads it. It is, in fact, a 35 
double pun ; and we have always observed that a superfoetation 
in this sort of wit is dangerous.' When a man has said a good 

1 Swift. 



314 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not care to 
be cheated a second time ; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with 
reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two 
puns at a time. The impression, to be forcible, must be simul- 
5 taneous and undivided. 



THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES 

Those who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. 
Conrady. 

The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from the ce- 
lestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly 
10 light, she informs,^ with corresponding characters, the fleshly 
tenement which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable 
mansion. 

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her 
pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture. 
15 To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine 
Spenser platonising sings : 

Every spirit as it is more pure, 

And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
20 To habit in, and it more fairly dight° 

With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For of the soul the body form doth take : 
For soul is form, and doth the body make. 



But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady. 
25 These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy ; for 
here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause, which 
throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as 
ever : 

Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
30 Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd. 

Either by chance, against the course of kind,° 
Or through unaptness in the substance found, 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
That will not yield unto her form's direction, 
35 But is perform 'd with some foul imperfection. 



THAT 'HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES 315 

From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody 
[ike Mrs. Conrady. 

The spirit of this good lady — her previous anima — must 
bave stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which 
tie speaks of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a 5 
ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind — and sure hers is 
Dne of the gentlest — ever had to deal with. 

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inexplicable, we 
mean, but by this modification of the theory — we have come to 
3; conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain 10 
ill over, than amidst a tolerable residue of features to hang out 
3ne that shall be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Con- 
rady 's countenance that it would be better if she had but a nose, 
[t is impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We have 
seen the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled in the 15 
attempt at a selection. The tout-ensemble defies particularizing. 
rt is too complete — too consistent, as we may say — to admit 
3f these invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles 
had picked out here a lip — and there a chin — out of the col- 
lected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a sym- 20 
metrical whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to 
cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance in question ; to 
say that this, or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced 
that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the 
result of harmony. Like that too it reigns without a com- 25 
petitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady without pronouncing 
tier to be the plainest woman that he ever met with in the 
course of his life. The first time that you are indulged with a 
sight of her face, is an era in your existence ever after. You 
ire glad to have seen it — like Stonehenge. No one can pre- 30 
:end to forget it. No one ever apologised to her for meeting 
bier in the street on such a day and not knowing her : the pre- 
text would be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for another, 
^^obody can say of her, " I think I have seen that face some- 
where, but I cannot call to mind where." You must remember 35 
;hat in such a parlour it first struck you — like a bust. You 
vondered where the owner of the house had picked it up. You 
vondered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly too ! 
S^o one ever thought of asking her to sit for her picture. 



316 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Lockets are for remembrance ; and it would be clearly superflu- 
ous to hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, can never 
be out of it. It is not a mean face either ; its entire originality 
precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces 
5 which improve upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordi- 
nary people, by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a 
cheat upon our eyes; juggle our senses out of their natural irrn 
pressions ; and set us upon discovering good indications in 
countenance, which at first sight promised nothing less. We 

10 detect gentleness, which had escaped us, lurking about an 
under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her 
face remains the same ; when she has done you a thousand, 
and you know that she is ready to double the number, still it is 
that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it would 

15 be a good face if it were not marked by the small-pox — a com- 
pliment which is always more admissive than excusatory — for 
either Mrs. Conrady never had the small-pox ; or, as we say, 
took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. 
There it is. It is her mark, her token; that which she is 

20 known by. 

XI 

THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN 

THE MOUTH : ^H 

Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope we have 
more delicacy than to do either ; but some faces spare us the 
trouble of these dental inquiries. And what if the beast, which! 
my friend would force upon my acceptance, pi-ove, upon the! 

25 face of it, a sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill-favoured jade, whom I 
no gentleman could think of setting up in his stables? Must I,j 
rather than not be obliged to my friend, make her a compan- 
ion to Eclipse or Lightfoot? A horse-giver, no more than a 
horse-seller, has a right to palm his spavined article upon us 

30 for good ware. An equivalent is expected in either case ; and, 
with my own goodwill, I would no more be cheated out of my 
thanks than out of my money. Some people have a knack of 
putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to J 
substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. Our I 



MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH 317 

friend Mitis carries this humour of never refusing a present, to 
the very point of absurdity — if it were possible to couple the 
ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy and real good- 
nature. Not an apartment in his fine house (and he has a 
true taste in household decorations), but is stuffed up with 5 
some preposterous print or mirror — the worst adapted to his 
panels that may be — the presents of his friends that know his 
weakness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced to make 
room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched artist of 
his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his 10 
hands for bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them 
here gratis. The good creature has not the heart to mortify 
the painter at the expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant 
(if it did not vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in 
his dining parlour, surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins 15 
to God knows whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady 
Bettys of his own honourable family, in favour to these adopted 
frights, are consigned to the staircase and the lumber-room. In 
like manner, his goodly shelves are one by one stripped of his 
favourite old authors, to give place to a collection of presen-20 
tation copies — the flour and bran of modern poetry. A pre- 
sentation copy, Reader — if haply you are yet innocent of 
such favours — is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you 
by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of 
it ; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship ; 25 
if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours which 
does sell, in return. We can speak to experience, having by us 
a tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a meta- 
phor to death — we are willing to acknowledge that in some 
gifts there is sense. . A duplicate out of a friend's library 30 
(whei-e he has more than one copy of a rare author) is intel- 
ligible. There are favours, short of the pecuniary — a thing 
not fit to be hinted at among gentlemen — whicJfi confer as 
much grace upon the acceptor as the offerer : the kind, we 
confess, which is most to our palate, is of those little concili- 35 
atory missives, which for their vehicle generally choose a 
hamper — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine — 
though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter, that it be 
home-made. We love to have our friend in the country sitting 



318 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

thus at our table by proxy ° ; to apprehend his presence (though 
a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly 
aspect reflects to us his " plump corpusculum ; " to taste him in 
grouse or woodcock ; to feel him gliding down in the toast pecu- 
5 liar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury 
brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves ; to know 
him intimately : such participation is methinks unitive, as the 
old theologians phrase it. For these considerations we should 
be sorry if certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to 

10 bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were entirely 
done away with. A hare, as the law now stands, makes many 
friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing his gout) with a 
leash of partridges. Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) 
passes them to Lucius ; who, in his turn, preferring his friend's 

15 relish to his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their 
ever-widening progress, and round of unconscious circummi- 
gration, they distribute the seeds of harmony over half a 
parish. We are w^ell-disposed to this kind of sensible remem- 
brances ; and are the less apt to be taken by those little airy 

20 tokens — impalpable to the palate — w^hich, under the names of 
rings, lockets, keepsakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. 
We could never away with these indigestible trifles. They are 
the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship. 



THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER 
SO HOMELY 

Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; the home 
25 of the very poor man, and another which we shall speak to 
presently. Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and the 
benches of alehouses, if they could speak, might bear mournful 
testimony to the first. To them the very poor man resorts for 
an image of the home, which he cannot find at home. For a ■ 
30 starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough to keep l{ 
alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many shivering chil- ■ 
dren with their mother, he finds in the depths of winter always 



HOME IS HOME THOUGH NEVER SO HOMELY 319 

a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. 
Instead of the clamours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he 
meets with a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the 
trifle which he can afford to spend. He has companions which 
his home denies him, for the very poor man has no visitors. 5 
He can look into the goings on of the world, and speak a little 
to politics. At home there are no politics stirring, but the 
domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics that 
should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a sym- 
pathy with general existence, are crushed in the absorbing con- 10 
sideration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the 
price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home 
there is no larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty ; 
and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the 
common bars, or munches his humbler cold viands, his relish- 15 
ing bread and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where no one 
reflects upon his poverty, he has sight of the substantial joint 
providing for the landlord and his family. He takes an inter- 
est in the dressing of it ; and while he assists in removing the 
trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as beef 20 
and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. All 
this while he deserts his wife and children. But what wife, 
and what children? Prosperous men, who object to this deser- 
tion, image to themselves some clean contented family like that 
which they go home to. But look at the countenance of the 25 
poor wives who follow and persecute their goodman to the door 
of the public-house, which he is about to enter, when something 
like shame would restrain him, if stronger misery did not 
induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, 
in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament has been 30 
long effaced by misery, — is that a face to stay at home with ? is 
it more a woman, or a wild cat ? alas ! it is the face of the wife 
of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile no 
longer. What comforts can it share ? what burthens can it 
lighten? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal 35 
shared together ! But what if there be no bread in the cup- 
board? The innocent prattle of his children takes out the 
sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor 
do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that 



320 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

condition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor 
people, said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up 
their children ; they drag them up. 

The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their 
5 hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflecting person. 
No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to 
coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humour it. 
There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be 
beaten. It has been prettily said, that '' a babe is fed with 

10 milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, 
unnourishing ; the return to its little baby tricks, and efforts 
to engage attention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had 
a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the 
lullaby of nurses, it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the 

15 hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or 
the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; the prattled 
nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the whole- 
some lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present 
sufferings, and awakens the passions of young wonder. It was 

20 never sung to — no one ever told to it a tale of the nursery. It 
was dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. It had no young 
dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities of life. A 
child exists not for the very poor as any object of dalliance; it 
is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be 

25 betimes inured to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the 
co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his 
diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with 
recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have 
no young times. It makes the very heart to bleed to overhear 

30 the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, 
a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above 
the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It is 
not of to^^s, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that 
age) ; of the promised sight, or play ; of praised sufficiency at 

35 school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of 
coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should 
be the very outpomdngs of curiosity in idleness, are marked 
with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be 
a woman, before it was a child. It has learned to go to mar- 



HOME IS HOME THOUGH NEVER SO HOMELY 321 

ket ; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs ; it is knowing, 
acute, sharpened ; it never prattles. Had we not reason to say- 
that the home of the very poor is no home ? 

There is yet another home, which we are constrained to deny 
to be one. It has a larder, which the home of the poor man 5 
wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which the poor dream 
not. But with all this, it is no home. It is — the house of 
the man that is infested with many visitors. May we be 
branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our heart to the many 
noble-hearted friends that at times exchange their dwelling for 10 
our poor roof ! It is not of guests that we complain, but of 
endless, purposeless visitants; droppers-in, as they are called. 
We sometimes wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very 
error of the position of our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill cal- 
culated, being just situate in a medium — a plaguy suburban 15 
mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or country. We 
are older than we were, and age is easily put out of its way. 
We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and we 
cannot brook° to see them drop in endlessly succeeding imperti- 
nences. At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as need- 20 
ful as sleep. It is the refreshing sleep of the day. The 
growing infirmities of age manifest themselves in nothing more 
strongly than in an inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing 
which we are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We have 
neither much knowledge nor devices ; but there are fewer in the 25 
place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our 
way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had 
vast reversions in time future ; we are reduced to a present 
pittance, and obliged to economize in that article. We bleed 
away our moments now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot 30 
bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted into by 
moths. We are willing to barter our good time with a friend, 
who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the distinction 
between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter takes 
your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest 35 
is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird ; the visitant 
is your fly, that flaps in at your window and out again, leaving 
nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The 
inferior functions of life begin to move heavily. We cannot 

T 




322 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

concoct our food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be 
nutritive, must be solitary. With difficulty we can eat before 
a guest ; and never understood what the relish of public feast- 
ing meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair play, in a 
5 crowd. The unexpected coming in of a visitant stops the 
machine. There is a punctual generation who time their calls 
to the precise commencement of your dining-hour — not to eat 
— but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, 
and we feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others 

10 again show their genius, as we have said, in knocking the 
moment you have just sat down to a book. They have a pecu- 
liar compassionate sneer, with which they " hope that they do 
not interrupt your studies." Though they flutter off the next 
moment, to carry their impertinences to the nearest student 

15 that they can call their friend, the tone of the book is spoiled ; w^e 
shut the leaves, and with Dante's° lovers, read no more that 
day. It were well if the effect of intrusion were simply coex- 
tensive with its presence ; but it mars all the good hours after- 
wards. These scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes 

20 not hastily. " It is a prostitution of the bravery of friendship," 
says worthy Bishop Taylor, '' to spend it upon impertinent 
people, who are, it may be, loads to their families, but can never 
ease my loads." This is the secret of their gaddings, their 
visits, and morning calls. They too have homes, which are 

25 — no homes. 



THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG 

"Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most willingly 
embrace the offer of your friendship. We have long known 
your excellent qualities. We have wished to have you nearer 
to us ; to hold you within the very innermost fold of our heart. 
30 We can have no reserve towards a person of your open and 
noble nature. The frankness of your honour suits us exactly. 
We have been long looking for snch a friend. Quick — let us 
disburthen our troubles into each other's bosom — let us make 
our single joys shine hy reduplication — But yap, yap, yap ! — 



YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG 323 

what is this confounded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which 
is none of the bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 

" I^ is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. Here, 
Test — Test— Test!" 

" But he has bitten me." 5 

" Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better acquainted with 
him. I have had him three years. He never bites me." 

Yap^ yap^ yap ! — '^ He is at it again." 

" Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like to be 
kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the respect due 10 
to myself." 

*' But do you always take him out with you, when you go a 
friendship-hunting ? " 

" Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-conditioned 
animal. I call him my test — the touchstone by which I try a 15 
friend. ]!^o one can properly be said to love me, who does not 
love him." 

"Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if upon fur- 
ther consideration we are obliged to decline the otherwise 
invaluable offer of your friendship. We do not like dogs." 20 

" Mighty well, sir, — you know the conditions — you may 
have worse offers. Come along, Test." 

The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in the in- 
tercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions of breaking 
off' an agreeable intimacy by reason of these canine appendages. 25 
They do not always come in the shape of dogs ; they sometimes 
wear the more plausible and human character of kinsfolk, near 
acquaintances, my friend's friend, his partner, his wife, or his 
children. We could never yet form a friendship — not to speak 
of more delicate correspondences — however much to our taste, 30 
without the intervention of some third anomaly, some imperti- 
nent clog affixed to the relation — the understood dog in the 
proverb. The good things of life are not to be had singly, but 
come to us with a mixture ; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a 
task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful companion is 35 
* * * * , if he did not always bring his tall cousin with him ! 
He vseems to grow with him ; like some of those double births, 
which we remember to have read of with such wonder and de- 
light in the old "Athenian Oracle," where Swift commenced 



324 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him !) 
upon Sir William Temple. There is the picture of the brother, 
with the little brother peeping out at his shoulder ; a species of 
fraternity, which we have no name of kin close enough to com- 
Sprehend. When * * * * comes, poking in his head and shoul- 
der into your room, as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you 
have now got him to yourself — what a three hours chat we 
shall have! — but, ever in the haunch of him, and before his 
diffident body is well disclosed in your apartment, appears the 

10 haunting shadow of the cousin, overpeering his modest kins- 
man, and sure to overlay the expected good talk with his insuf- 
ferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness 
of observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard 
when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sem- 

15 pronia, without sitting down to chess with her eternal brother ? 
or know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card- 
playing relations? must my friend's brethren of necessity be 
mine also ? must w^e be hand and glove with Dick Selby the 
parson, or Jack Selby the calico-printer, because W. S., who is 

20 neither, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim 
a common parentage with them? Let him lay down his broth- 
ers ; and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we 
have a superflux) to balance the concession. Let F. H. lay 
down his garrulous uncle ; and Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, 

25 and superfluous establishment of six boys — things between boy 
and manhood — too ripe for play, too raw for conversation — 
that come in, impudently staring his father's old friend out of 
countenance ; and will neither aid, nor let alone, the confer- 
ence : that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as we 

30 were wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood. 

It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with these 
canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this sense keep 
a dog. But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt ; or 
Euspina expects you to cherish and fondle her viper sister, 

35 whom she has preposterously taken into her bosom, to try sting- 
ing conclusions upon your constancy; they must not complain 
if the house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla° must have broken 
off many excellent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all 
that loved her, loving her dogs also. 



YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG 325 

An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of Delia 
Cruscan memory. In tender youth, he loved and courted a 
modest appanage to the Opera, in truth a dancer, who had won 
him by the artless contrast between her manners and situation. 
She seemed to him a native violet, that had been transplanted 5 
by some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hotbed. 
ISTor, in truth, was she less genuine and sincere than she ap- 
peared to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for 
appearance sake, and for due honour to the bride's relations, 
she craved that she might have the attendance of her friends 10 
and kindred at the approaching solemnity. The request was 
too amiable not to be conceded; and in this solicitude for con- 
ciliating the goodwill of mere relations, he found a presage^ of 
her superior attentions to himself, when the golden shaft should 
have "killed the flock of all affections else." The morning 15 
came; and at the Star and Garter, Kichmond — the place ap- 
pointed for the breakfasting — accompanied with one English 
friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the bride 
should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had 
made. They came in six coaches — the whole corps du ballet 20 
— French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the 
famous pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from 
the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her ex- 
cuse. But the first and second Buffa were there ; and Signor 
Sc — , and Signora Ch — , and Madame Y — , with a countless 25 
cavalcade besides of choruses, figurantes, — at the sight of 
whom Merry afterwards declared, that "then for the first time 
it struck him seriously, that he was about to marry — a dancer." 
But there was no help for it. Besides, it was her day ; these 
were, in fact, her friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though 30 
whimsical, was all very natural. But when the bride — hand- 
ing out of the last coach a still more extraordinary figure than 
the rest — presented to him as her father — the gentleman that 
was to give her away — no less a person than Signor Delpini 
himself — with a sort of pride, as much as to say, See what 135 
have brought to do us honour ! — the thought of so extraordi- 
nary a paternity quite overcame him ; and slipping away under 
some pretence from the bride and her motley adherents, poor 
Merry took horse from the backyard to the nearest seacoast, 



326 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

from which, shipping himself to America, he shortly after con- 
soled himself with a more congenial match in the person of 
Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended clown father, and a 
bevy of painted BufCas for bride-maids. 



XIV 

THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK 

5 At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night- 
gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are 
not naturalist enough to determine. But for a mere human 
gentleman — that has no orchestra business to call him from 
his warm bed to such preposterous exercises — we take ten, or 

10 half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), 
to be the very earliest hour at which he can begin to think of 
abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say ; for to do it in 
earnest, requires another half hour's good consideration. Not but 
there are pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like gawds, 

15 abroad in the world, in summer-time especially, some houi's 
before what we have assigned; which a gentleman may see, as 
they say, only for getting up. But having been tempted once 
or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess 
our curiosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of being 

20 the sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We hold 
the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon 
such observances ; which have in them, besides, something 
Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our 
usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), to go a 

25 journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we 
suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness and head- 
aches ; N'ature herself sufficiently declaring her sense of our 
presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses by 
the measures of that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny 

30 not that there is something sprightly and vigorous, at the out- 
set especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering 
to get the start of a lazy world ; to conquer Death by proxy in 
his image. But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and 



THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK Z21 

we pay usually in strange qualms, before night falls, the pen- 
alty of the unnatural inversion. Therefore, while the busy 
part of mankmd are fast huddling on their clothes, are already 
up and about their occupations, content to have swallowed their 
sleep by wholesale; we choose to linger a-bed and digest our 5 
dreams. It is the very time to recombine the wanderinQ- im- 
ages, which night in a confused mass presented ; to snatch them 
from forgetfulness; to shape, and mould them. Some people 
have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp 
them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We love to chew 10 
the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a 
brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the 
sadder nocturnal tragedies; to drag into davlight a struR^lin^ 
and half-vanishmg nightmare; to handle ''and examine the 
terrors, or the airy solaces. We have too much respect for 15 
these spiritual communications, to let them go so lightly We 
are not so stupid, or so careless as that Imperial forgetter of his 
dreams, that we should need a seer to remind us of the form 
ot them. Ihey seem to us to have as much significance as our 
waking concerns ; or rather to import us more nearly, as more 20 
nearly we approach by years to the shadowy world, whither we 
are hastening. We have shaken hands with the world's busi- 
ness; we have done with it; we have discharged ourself of it. 
Why should we get up? we have neither suit to solicit, nor 
attairs to manage The drama has shut in upon us at the 25 
fourth act We have nothing here to expect, but in a short 
time a sick-bed and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate 
death by such shadows as night affords. We are already half 
acquainted with ghosts. We were never much in the world 
i>isappointment early struck a dark veil between us and its 30 
diizzling illusions. Our spirits showed grey before our hairs. 
I he mig-hty changes of the world already appear as but the 
vain stutt out of which dramas are composed. We have 
asked no more of life than what the mimic images in plav- 
houses present us with. Even those tvpes have waxed fainter. 35 
Our clock appears to have struck. We are superannuated. 
in this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we contract politic 
alliances with shadows. It is good to have friends at court, 
ihe abstracted media of dreams seem no ill introduction to 



328 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

that spiritual presence, upon which, in no long time, we expect 
to be thrown. We are trying to know a little of the usages of 
that colony ; to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet 
with there, that we may be the less awkward at our first com- 
5ing among them. We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as 
knowing we shall soon be of their dark companionship. There- 
fore, we cherish dreams. We try to spell in them the alpha- 
bet of the invisible world; and think we know already, how 
it shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes which, while we 

10 clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. 
We feel attenuated into their meagre essences, and have given 
the hand of half-way approach to incorporeal being. We once 
thought life to be something ; but it has unaccountably fallen 
from us before its time. Therefore we choose to dally with 

15 visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why 
should we get up? 

XV 

THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB 

We could never quite understand the philosophy of this 
arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for 
instruction to these woolly bedfellows. A sheep, when it is 

20 dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if 
he can. Man found out long sixes — Hail, candlelight! with- 
out disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of 
the three — if we may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, 
mild viceroy of the moon! — We love to read, talk, sit silent, 

25 eat, drink, sleep, by candlelight. They are everybody's sun and 
moon. This is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting 
it, what savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, 
wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses! They must 
have lain about and grumbled at one another in the dark. 

30 What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt 
about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's cheek to be sure 
that he understood it? This accounts for the seriousness of 
the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast (try Hesiod^ or Ossian), 
derived from the tradition of those unlantern'd nights. Jokes 



WE SHOULD LIE DOW^'' WITH: THE LAMB 329 

came in with candles. We wonder how they saw to pick up a 
pin, if they had any. How did they sup? what a melange of 
chance carving they must have made of it ! — here one had got 
a leg of a goat when he wanted a horse's shoulder — there 
another had dipt his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, 5 
when he meditated right mare's milk. There is neither good 
eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even in these civilized 
times, has never experienced this, when at some economic table 
he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for the flavour 
till the lights came ? The senses absolutely give and take re- 10 
ciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal in the dark ? or dis- 
tinguish Sherris from pure Malaga? Take away the candle 
from the smoking man; by the glimmering of the left ashes, 
he knows that he is still smoking, but he knows it only by an 
inference ; till the restored light, coming in aid of the olfac- ^5 
tories, reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then how he 
redoubles his puffs! how he burnishes! — there is absolutely 
no such thing as reading, but by a candle. We have tried the 
affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry 
arbours ; but it was labour thrown away. Those gay motes in 20 
the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many 
coquettes, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of 
your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writer digests 
his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their 
perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour. It is a mock- 25 
ery, all that is reported of the influential Phcebus. No true 
poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are abstracted 
works — 

Things that were born, when none but the still night, 

ADd his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. 3q 

Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, the 
crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and 
filing (as mine author hath it), they must be content to hold 
their inspiration of the candle. The mild internal light, that 
reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the 35 
sunshine. Night and silence call out the starry fancies. Mil- 
ton's Morning Hymn on Paradise, we would hold a good wager, 
was penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description of a 



330 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

sunrise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these 
our humbler lucubrations tune our best-measured cadences 
(Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the 
drowsier watchman, " blessing the doors ; " or the wild sweep of 
5 winds at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we 
have yet attempted, courts our endeavours. We would indite 
something about the Solar System. — Betty, bring the candles. 



XVI 
THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE 

We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a man's 
friends, and to all that have to do with him ; but w^hether the 

10 condition of the man himself is so much to be deplored, may 
admit of a question. We can speak a little to it, being ourself 
but lately recovered — we whisper it in confidence. Reader — 
out of a long and desperate fit of the sullens. Was the cure a 
blessing? The conviction which wrought it, came too clearly 

15 to leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries — for they were mere 
fancies — which had provoked the humour. But the humour 
itself was too seif-pleasing while it lasted — we know how bare 
we lay ourself in the confession — to be abandoned all at once 
with the grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs which we 

20 know to have been imaginary; and for our old acquaintance 

N , whom we find to have been a truer friend .than w^e took 

him for, we substitute some phantom — a Caius or a Titius — 
as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak our yet unsatisfied 
resentments on. It is mortifying to fall at once from the pin- 

25 nacle of neglect ; to forego the idea of having been ill-used and 
contumaciously treated by an old friend. The first thing to 
aggrandize a man in his own conceit, is to conceive of himself 
as neglected. There let him fix if he can. To undeceive him 
is to deprive him of the most tickling morsel within the range 

30 of self-complacency. No flattery can come near it. Happy is 
he who suspects his friend of an injustice ; but supremely blest, 
who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy to depress and un- 
dervalue him. There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane) 



THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE 331 

far beyond the reach of all that the world counts joy — a deep, 
enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the superficial seek 
it not, of discontent. Were we to recite one half of this mys- 
tery — which W'e were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all 
the world would be in love with disrespect ; w^e should wear a 5 
slight for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies w^ould be the 
only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious book in 
the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is unpalatable only 
in the commencement. The first sting of a suspicion is griev- 
ous.; but wait — out of that wound, which to flesh and blood 10 
seemed so difficult, there is balm and honey to be extracted. 
Your friend passed you on such or such a day, — having in his 
company one that you conceived w^orse than ambiguously dis- 
posed towards you, — passed you in the street without notice. 
To be sure, he is something short-sighted; and it was in your 15 
power to have accosted him. But facts and sane inferences are 
trifles to a true adept in the science of dissatisfaction. He 

must have seen you ; and S , who was with him, must have 

been the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may. 
But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of it, and 20 
you are a made man from this time. Shut yourself up, and — 
rejecting, as an enemy to your peace, qvery w^hispering sugges- 
tion that but insinuates there may be a mistake — reflect seri- 
ously upon the many lesser instances which you had begun to 
perceive, in proof of your friend's disaffection towards you. 25 
None of them singly was much to the purpose, but the aggre- 
gate weight is positive ; and you have this last affront to clench 
tliem. Thus far the process is anything but agreeable. But 
now to your relief comes in the comparative faculty. You con- 
jure up all the kind feelings you have had for your friend; 30 
what you have been to him, and what you would have been to 
him, if he would have suffered you ; how you defended him in 
this or that place ; and his good name — his literary reputation, 
and so forth, was always dearer to you than your own ! Your 
heart, spite of itself, yearns towards him. You could weep 35 
tears of blood but for a restraining pride. How^ say you? do 
you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort ? some allay of sweet- 
ness in the bitter w^aters? Stop not here, nor pen uriously cheat 
yourself of your reversions. You are on vantage ground. En- 



332 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

large your speculations, and take in the rest of your friends, as 
a spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them who 
has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water? Begin 
to think that the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. 
5 That the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as 
honour, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. 
Image yourself to yourself, as the only possible friend in a 
world incapable of that communion. Now the gloom thickens. 
The little star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage you 

10 through deeper glooms than this. You are not yet at the half 
point of your elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half 
sulky enough. Adverting to the world in general (as these 
circles in the mind will spread to infinity), reflect with what 
strange injustice you have been treated in quarters where (set- 

15 ting gratitude and the expectation of friendly returns aside as 
chimseras) you pretended no claim beyond justice, the naked 
due of all men. Think the very idea of right and fit fled from 
the earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle of it, till you 
have swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere ; the other 

20 being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the world 
aforesaid. To gTow bigger every moment in your own conceit, 
and the world to lessen ; to deify yourself at the expense of your 
species ; to judge the world — this is the acme and supreme point 
of your mystery — these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness. 

25 We profess no more of this grand secret than what our- 
self experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulk- 
ing in our study. We had proceeded to the penultimate point, 
at which the true adept seldom stops, where the consideration 
of benefit forgot is about to merge in the meditation of general 

30 injustice — when a knock at the door was followed by the 
entrance of the very friend whose not seeing of us in the morn- 
ing (for we will now confess the case our own), an accidental 
oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable generalization ! 
To mortify us still more, and take down the whole flattering 

35 superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he had 

brought in his hand the identical S , in whose favour we 

had suspected him of the contumacy. Asseverations were need- 
less, where the frank manner of tjfiem both was convictive of 
the injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that they 



THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE 333 

perceived our embarrassment; but were too proud, or some- 
thing else to confess to the secret of it. We had beeu but too 
lately m the condition of the noble patient in Argos°: — 

Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos, 

In vacuo Isetus sessor plausorque theatro — 5 

and could have exclaimed with equal reason against the friendly 
hands that cured us — "^ 

Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
h.t demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. 10 



NOTES 

THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

London Magazine^ August, 1820. Original title : Becollections of 
the South-Sea House. For Lamb's connection with the South-Sea 
House, see Introduction, p. xi. 

I : 3. Annuitant. Lamb did not become an annuitant until 1825 ; 
and then (see Introduction) of the East-India House. 

1 : 11. Balclutha. In Macpherson's poem Carthon, a town 
belonging to the Britons, taken and burned by the father of the 
Irish hero Fingal. " I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they 
were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls ; and the voice 
of the people is heard no more." Carthon is one of a collec- 
tion of ''supposed translations" published 1760-1763 by James 
Macpherson, and ascribed by him to Ossian, a Gaelic poet and war- 
rior of the third century. ''A controversy instantly sprang up 
between those who believed and those who disbelieved in the 
authenticity of these works. Macpherson found a sturdy sceptic 
in Dr. Johnson." — Edmund Gosse, A History of Eighteenth Cen- 
tury Literature. 

2:7. Mammon. The personification of riches. 

2:9. Famous Bubble. The reference is to "The South-Sea 
Bubble " of 1720. See Green's Short History of the English Peo- 
ple, Ch. IX., Sec. X. 

2 : 28. Titan size. Gigantic. The Titans were giants of classic 
mythology. Vaux's superhuman plot. Guido Vaux, or Guy 
Fawkes. The reference is to the " Gunpowder Plot," November 
6, 1606, in the reign of James I. of England. 

335 



I 



336 NOTES 

2 : 29. manes. A classic term for the spirits of the dead. 

3:1. Compare feeUng for antiquity, p. 11 of the essay on Oxford. 
3:7. rubric. Written or printed in red. 

3 : 17. Herculaneum. The city overwhelmed with Pompeii in 
the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Excavations have brought to 
light many valuable manuscripts and statues, pounce-boxes. 
Boxes holding pounce, or powder, which was sprinkled on written 
sheets, to dry the ink. The place of these was supplied by blotting- 
paper about the middle of the nineteenth century. 

3 : 22. genius of the place. Genius means here, and elsewhere 
in the essays, " the inborn nature," " the ruling spirit." 

3 : 26. Humourists. A humourist here means, ''a person who 
acts according to his humour ; — a person of eccentric character." 

3 : 37. Evans. William Evans, like the other characters whom 
Lamb describes in this essay, was really a clerk in the South-Sea 
House. Their names are not, as Lamb suggests later, "fantastic 
and insubstantial " ; each one of the men named " had a being." 

3:37. Cambro-Briton. A Welshman. From " Cambria," the 
Latin name for Wales. 

4 : 3. Maccaronies. First used in this sense in the eighteenth 
century. Horace Walpole writes, in 1764, of "The Maccaroni 
Club (which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear 
long curls and spying-glasses)." 

4 : 20. Pennant. Thomas Pennant, a naturalist and antiquarian ; 
a writer on archaeology. He had published an Account of Lon- 
don, 1790. 

4 : 26. William Hogarth. An English painter and engraver 
(1697-1764). Lamb called Hogarth "one of the greatest orna- 
ments of England." His admiration he embodied in an essay On 
the Genius and Character of Hogarth. Here he speaks of having 
been familiar from boyhood with certain "capital prints by Ho- 
garth." 

4 : 28. confessors. A confessor is " one who adheres to his reli- 



NOTES 337 

gion under persecution, but does not suffer martyrdom." These 
were Huguenots who fled from France after the Ee vocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, 1686. 

4 : 35. Westminster Hall. Adjoining the Houses of Parliament, 
to which it now serves as a vestibule. It was part of the ancient 
palace of Westminster, where sat some of the first English Parlia- 
ments. 

4 : 39. Kefer to Milton's Paradise Lost, Bk. VIII., 454, and point 
out the words in this passage originally printed in quotation marks 
in the London Magazine, 

5 : 4. original state of white paper. " Let us then suppose the 
mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without 
any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?" — John Locke, An 
Essay Co7icerning Human Understandiiig , Bk. II., Ch. I. 

5 : 21. Decus et solamen. " Honour (or glory) and consolation." 
Virgil, ^neid, Bk. X., 858. 

5 : 28. Orphean Lyre. Refer to Paradise Lost, Bk. III., 17, and 
point out the words here originally printed in quotation marks 
in the London Magazine. Orpheus was the famous musician of 
classic mythology, the beauty of w^hose music had a powerful charm. 

5 : 32. To the sentence in parenthesis was appended, in the 
London Magazine, a footnote referring to 'Hhe present tenant" 
of these rooms, " a Mr. Lamb " ; i.e. Lamb's own brother. 

5 : 34. Sweet breasts. *' Sweet-breasted " is defined in the Cen- 
tury Dictionary as ''sweet-voiced" ; from breast in the old sense 
of "musical voice." 

5 : 38. Lord Midas. In classic legend a king of Phrygia who 
was judge of a musical contest between Pan (see note below) and 
Apollo, the god of music ; in his ignorance he awarded the prize to 
Pan. 

6:35. With Fortinbras. Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV., iv., 65-56. 
For a criticism of the account of John Tipp, see Introduction, 

p. XX. 

z 



338 ' NOTES 

7 : 4. dusty dead. Find a parallel in this line to Shakespeare's 
Macbeth, V., v., 22, 23. 

7 : 12. Barbican. A street in London. Named probably from a 
barbican, or tower, which must have stood there originally. 

7 : 14. New-born gauds. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, 
III., iii., 176. "Gaud" meant a festivity, a rejoicing (Latin gau- 
dere, "to rejoice") ; a showy ceremony. A "gaudy-day" was a 
festival or holiday ; see essay on Chris fs Hospital. 

7 : 19. Wilkes. There is a discussion of the justice .of the pun- 
ishment of John Wilkes in Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the 
Cause of the Present Discontents^ 1770. 

7 : 24. Plumers. The family of Plumers owned the old house 

described in " Blakesmoor in H shire." See also Introduction, 

p. xii. 

7:34. Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). The celebrated Eng- 
lish lexicographer, essayist, and poet. See his famous biography 
by James Boswell. 

8 : 3. Arcadian melodies. Arcadia was the residence of Pan, 
god of shepherds ; and is a name for any land where one may 
" fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world." " Ar- 
cadian " here would mean " pastoral." 

8 : 4. Arden. Look for this song in Shakespeare's As You Like 
It, IL, 7. 

8:16. Newton. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the English 
mathematician and philosopher, who discovered the law of 
gravitation. 

8 : 18. Nib a pen. Notice reference here to the old-fashioned 
methods. To 7iib a pen meant to "furnish with a nib or 
point"; i.e. to trim a quill pen to a point; a wafer was "a 
thin disc of dried paste used to seal letters, to fasten documents 
together." 

8 : 23. Fantastic. See also fantastical later ; imaginary. In 
Shakespeare's Macbeth, I., iii., 53, Banquo questions the witches : — 



NOTES 339 

" Are ye fantastical, or that indeed 
Which outwardly ye show ? " 

8 : 24. Henry Pimpernel, etc. rrom the Introduction to Shake- 
speare's Taming of the Shrew. Here one of the duke's servants 
quotes these names in a speech to Christopher Sly, the tinker, and 
concludes : — 

" And twenty more such names and men as these 
Which never were nor no man ever saw." 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

London Magazine^ October, 1820. 

8:30. Quis sculpsit. Literally, '*Who carved or graved?" 
That is, the name of the artist. 

8 : 34. Humours. '-'■ Peculiarities of disposition." 

9 : 3. Notched. Attribute of his desk, figuratively applied to the 
scrivener. 

9 : 6. Agnize. Remember. 

9 : 31. red-letter days. Important church feast-days are indi- 
cated in the calendar by red lettering. The observance of these as 
holidays gave the meaning now attached to the expression. 

9 : 36. Christ's Hospital. See next essay. 

9 : 37. Baskett Prayer Book. Edited by John Baskett, printer to 
King George II. 

ID : 1. Marsyas, Spagnoletti. Reference to a painting in the 
Museum of Madrid, by an artist of the seventeenth century, Jusepe 
Ribera (Re-ba'ra), known as Spagnoletto, " Little Spaniard." The 
picture represents the flaying of Marsyas, who had challenged the 
classic god Apollo to a musical contest, and was thus punished for 
his presumption. 

10 : 5. The better Jude. St. Jude the Apostle, as distinguished 
from Judas Iscariot, that one of the twelve Apostles who betrayed 
Christ. 



340 NOTES 



i 



lo : 6. gaudy-day. A gaudy-day was originally an annual feast- 
day in commemoration of some event in the history of a college. 
Hence, any festal occasion. 

lo: 11. Epiphany. From a Greek word meaning "a striking 
appearance, a manifestation." January 6, the Church feast which 
commemorates "the manifestation of the glory of Christ," in the 
adoration of the Magi, in His baptism, and in the miracle at the 
marriage of Cana. This feast, falling twelve days after Christmas, 
was called in England "Twelfth Day." See later, Bejoicings on 
the New Yearns Coming of Age. 

io:15. Tides. Times or seasons. Preserved in "Whitsun- 
tide " ; «' time and tide," etc. 

io:20. Selden. John Selden (1684-1654), a jurist and anti- 
quary, who had studied at Oxford, and who wrote on questions of 
English law. He lived for a time in the Inner Temple. 

lo : 21. Archbishop Usher, of the Church of England in the reign 
of Charles 1. He published a scheme of " biblical chronology." 

io:22. Shadow of the mighty Bodley. At the close of this 
essay, as it first appeared in the London Magazine^ is printed, 
" August 5th, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bodleian." The 
great Bodleian Library of Oxford was so named from its founder, 
Sir Thomas Bodley. 

Compare the one of Lamb's sonnets beginning, — 

** I was not trained in Academic bowers." 

Here occur the lines : — 

** Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, 
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, 
And I walk gowned.'^ 

In the Memoirs of William Hazlitt (see Introduction, p. xiv) is 
this reference to a visit he paid Oxford with Charles and Mary 



NOTES 341 

Lamb: — "He [Lamb] and the old colleges were hail fellow well 
met ; and in the quadrangles he walked ' gowned.' " 

lo: 31. ad eundem. " To the same standing." 

10 : 33. Sizar, Servitor. A sizar, or sizer, was a student at Cam- 
bridge, or at Trinity College, Dublin, who ate at the public table 
after the fellows, free of expense ; in return he was obliged to per- 
form certain menial services for the college. The sizers were 
originally so called because, as waiters, they distributed the "sizes," 
or portions, of provisions. Oliver Goldsmith was a sizar at Trinity 
College. A servitor was a student of similar rank at Oxford. 

10 : 34. Gentleman commoner, a student distinguished from the 
ordinary commoners by special academic dress, by dining at a 
separate table, and by paying higher fees. 

II : 1. reverend. Reverend because Christ Church was originally 
a cathedral. Henry YIII. connected this With the college he com- 
pleted here, originally founded by Cardinal Wolsey. The Latin 
name for Christ's is ^des Christi, It is not called " College," but 
is spoken of familiarly as " The House." 

li : 2. Seraphic Doctor. " Doctor Seraphicus," St. Bonaventura 
of Italy J who lived in the thirteenth century ; he was called " sera- 
phic " because of his fervor. 

1 1 : 6. Devoir. Duty ; from the French. 

II : 8. beadsman. One who counts his prayers on his beads, as 
he says them for others. See Keats's St. Agnes' Eve. 

II : 15. Manciple. A steward (0. F. Mancipe). 

II : 21. half Januses. Janus, the porter of heaven in classic 
mythology, who opens the year (January) ; the deity of gates, who 
bas two faces, and looks therefore both backward and forward. 

II : 31. Oxenford. Old name for Oxford. "A clerk ther was of 
Dxenford also. "— Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 
irride. ' ' To please, gratify, delight. ' ' Obsolete. Compare 11. 6-33 
with the first four paragraphs of " The South-Sea House." 

II : footnote. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). English phy. 



t 



I 

I 

I 



342 NOTES 

sician and writer. A great favourite with Lamb (see Introduction, 
p. xix), who refers constantly to his Beligio Medici, his Urn Burial, 
and his Christian Morals, and quotes often from them. 

12 : 4. sciential. Productive of knowledge. What apples are 
here referred to ? 

12:7. variae lectiones. "Different readings," suggested byi 
students of old manuscripts, who do not always agree in theii 
interpretations. At this point in the London Magazine followed 
footnote, in which Lamb told of his feeling on seeing the original 
written copy of Lycidas, which he had thought of as a " full-grown 
beauty." " I will never," he concludes, ''go into the workshop of 
any great artist again." 

12 : 9. The three witnesses. Keference to verses in the First 
Epistle of St. John, which stand in the Douay (translation of the 
Latin Vulgate), but are omitted from the Revised Version. 

12 : 10. Person. Richard Porson (1759-1808) , the famous scholar, 
and professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge. He was 
*' well known as a wit and genial companion." 

12 :11. G. D. George Dyer, a student and writer; editor of 
Valpy's edition of the classics. He published a History of the 
University and Colleges of Cambridge, His eccentricities fur- 
nished Lamb with numberless occasions for jokes; in many of 
Lamb's letters are passages which recall the tone of this essay. It 
was Dyer whom Lamb told — as he added in a footnote to this essay 
in the magazine — that " Lord Castelreagh had acknowledged him- 
self to be the author of Waverley.''^ 

12 : 13. Oriel. The library of Oriel contains many rare books. 

12 : 16. Scapula. Author of a Greek lexicon. 

13 : 13. M.'s. Basil Montagu, an intimate friend of Lamb, and 
of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 

13 : 22. Queen Lar. From the classic Lares, or Lars, souls of 
ancestors, deified spirits, who became household gods. To compli- 
ment Mrs. Montagu, Lamb has used this idea of a "Queen Lar " ; 



NOTES 343 

i.e. a queen of the hearth, or home. A. S. Anne Skepper, Mr. 
Montagu's stepdaughter, who married Bryan Procter, "Barry 
Cornwall" (see Introduction, p. xiv). 

13 : 29. Sosia. One of two counterparts in the Latin comedy 
Amphitruo, by Plautus. This play is one of the sources of Shake- 
speare's Comedy of Errors. 

13 : 38. Parnassus. The seat of music and poetry, where dwelt 
Apollo and the nymphs and muses. Plato, Harrington. The 
famous Greek philosopher Plato framed his ideal Republic before 
347 B.C., the date of his death at Athens. James Harrington wrote 
the Commonwealth of Oceana in 1656. Edmund Burke, in his 
Speech on Conciliation, introduces his plan of peace as follows: 
''I am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile 
framers of imaginary commonwealths; — not to the Republic of 
Plato, not to the Utopia of More, not to the Oceana of Harrington." 
Sir Thomas More's satire was published in 1516. Here followed in 
the London Magazine two paragraphs on G. D. , omitted from the 
1823 edition, because a correspondent in the magazine had protested 
against them. Lamb replied under the Lion^s Head, December, 
1820, that "under the initials G. D. it was his ambition to make 
more familiar to the public, a character which for integrity and 
single-heartedness he had long been accustomed to rank among the 
best patterns of his species. . . . That the anecdotes which he 
produced were no more than he conceived necessary to awaken 
attention to character, and were meant solely to illustrate it." The 
essay " Amicus Redivivus '! treats of Dyer again, and of his absent- 
mindedness. 

14 : 8. Cam and Isis. The rivers that flow by the two great 
universities. From the Cam, Cambridge took its name. Milton 
personifies the river in Lycidas. 

**Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, 
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge." 



344 NOTES 

14 : 9. Waters of Damascus. See 4 Kings v., 12. Muses' hill. 
Either Helicon, where rose the fountains of Aganippe and Hippo- 
crene, sources of inspiration ; or Parnassus. 

14 : 10, 13. Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains, and House 
Beautiful. In John Bunyan's Pilgrim'' s Progress. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO 

London Magazine., November, 1820. 

14 : 14. Mr. Lamb's "Works." The first collection of Lamb's 
writings, published, 1818, by C. and J. Oilier. This collection 
included a drama, John Woodvil, a story, Bosamund Gray, some 
verse, and several essays which had previously appeared in periodi- 
cals ; among these last was the Becollections of Chrisfs Hospital, 
first published, 1813, in The Gentleman'' s Magazine. One of the 
original meanings of "Hospital" — with which it is used in 
the name of the school — was a charitable institution for the edu- 
cation and maintenance of the young. ' ' In the time of Henry the 
Eighth, Christ-Hospital was a monastery of Franciscan friars. Be- 
ing dissolved, among the others, Edward the Sixth . . . assigned the 
revenues of it to the maintenance and education of a certain num- 
ber of poor orphan children born of citizens of London. . . . Christ- 
Hospital (for this is the proper name, and not Christ's Hospital) 
occupies a considerable portion of ground between Newgate Street, 
Giltspur Street, St. Bartholomew's, and Little Britain." — Leigh 
Hunt, Autobiography, Ch. III. For a description of this part of 
London, read Washington Irving' s Little Britain in The Sketch- 
Book. The main buildings of the school were all seen from 
Newgate Street, beyond high iron railings, and in the old days in 
recreation hour, one could see the boys with their blue gowns 
tucked up, playing ball ; there was usually a line of people peering 
at them through the railings. In May, 1902, the school was removed 



NOTES 345 

to Horsham, in Sussex, the old building torn down, and the site 
bought, partly by St. Bartholomew's Hospital and partly by the 
General Post-office. In some early verses Lamb has described him- 
self in the school uniform. In his Autobiography^ Ch. III., Leigh 
Hunt describes the costume in full. 

15 : 7. Banyan. " Banian " is a name given to a Hindoo in West- 
ern India. In reference to the Banians' abstinence from flesh, days 
on which no allowance of meat was served were called, in nautical 
language, " banyan days. " 

15 : 11. caro equina. Horseflesh. 

15 : 20. The good old relative. " My poor old aunt, whom you 
have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at 
school ; who used to toddle there to bring me good things, when I, 
schoolboy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to 
see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you 
went into the grammar school, and open her apron, and bring out 
her bason, with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me." 
— Lamb, in a letter to Coleridge, January, 1797. 

15:22. regale. A banquet (pronounced re-gal'), cates. Origi- 
nally " acates." Things purchased, — such provisions as are not in 
the house ; hence, dainties, luxuries. (French, acheter^ " to buy.") 

15 : 23. The Tishbite. Elias, or Elijah, the Thesbite, who was 
fed by ravens. See 3 Kings xvii. 

15 : 30. I was a poor friendless boy. Here Lamb writes in the 
person of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his schoolmate (see Intro- 
duction, p. xi). See Preface to "Last Essays," p. 183. The 
memorial to Coleridge at Christ's is a bronze statuette representing 
Coleridge as a boy, reading, Charles Lamb beside him on his right, 
and on his left an older schoolmate, Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, 
whom Lamb refers to later in this essay. There is a picture of 
this memorial in Mr. E. V. Lucas's volume of the Essays of Elia. 
The memorial to Lamb at the school is a medal given annually as 
a prize for the best English essays. 



346 NOTES 

i6 : 5. Calne in Wiltshire. This stands for Coleridge's home, 
Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. 

1 6 : 35. L.'s governor. For a further account of Samuel Salt, see 
Old Benchers of the Inner Temple and notes. 

17: 21. Nero. The cruel and tyrannical emperor of Rome, 54- 

68 A.D. 

17 : 30. Caligula's minion. A horse, proclaimed consul and 
worshipped as a god by Caligula, emperor of Rome, 37-41 a.d. 

17:32, waxing fat and kicking. Deuteronomy xxxii., 15. See 
Grace before Meat, p. 112, 1. 33. 

17: 35. walls of his own Jericho. " So all the people making 
a shout, and the trumpets sounding, when the voice and the sound 
thundered in the ears of the multitude, the walls forthwith fell 
down." — Joshua vi., 20. 

18 : 12. harpies. Harpies were horrible birds with the heads of 
women, and brazen claws ; they snatched the food from ^neas 
. and his followers, who had landed on their island. — See Virgil, 
^neid, Bk. III. 

18 : 13. Trojan in the hall of Dido. uEneid, Bk. I., 464. 

20:21. auto-da-fe. " Act of the faith." Portuguese and Span- 
ish form of words used in Spain to mean the execution of a sen- 
tence of the Inquisition. 

20 : 22. Watchet weeds. Blue clothes. 

20 : 28. disfigurements in Dante. Reference to The Inferno, 
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). 

21: 4. Ultima Supplicia. Extreme punishments. 

21 : 15. San Benito. So called because it was " of the same cut 
as that worn by the members of the Order of St. Benedict." The 
garment worn by persons under trial by the Inquisition, at an 
auto-da-f^. 

21 : 26. James Boyer. Leigh Hunt refers to Boyer as " famous 
for the mention of him by Lamb and Coleridge." His account of 
Boyer's severity agrees with Lamb's. Coleridge wrote of Boyer in 



NOTES 347 

his Biographia Liter aria, as a "very sensible, though at the same 
time a very severe, master " ; and represents himself as owing 
much to "his zealous and conscientious tutorage." 

21 : 38. like a dancer. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 
III., ii., 36. See Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist, p. 39. 

22 : 10. Peter Wilkins. The reference is to The Life and Ad- 
ventures of Peter Wilkins, by Robert Paltock, 1751, two volumes, 
a pleasant romance, not unlike Bohinson Crusoe. 

22 : 19. Rousseau and Locke. The reference here is to the sys- 
tems of education proposed, one by the French philosopher Jean 
Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and the other by the English phi- 
losopher John Locke (1632-1704). In both these systems, the 
" agreeable " had a very prominent part. 

22:29. Phaedrus. A Roman writer of fables in the first cen- 
tury A.D. 

22 ; 35. Young Helots. Helots were slaves whom Spartan 
parents made drunk in order to exhibit them to their sons in 
warning. 

22 : 37. Sardonic. " Bitterly ironical." From "Sardinia herba," 
" a bitter herb which was said to distort the face of the eater." 

23 : 2. The Samite. Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, born in 
Samos, probably about 582 b.c. He taught the transmigration of 
souls. The reference here is to his enjoining silence upon his 
pupils. 

23 : 3. Goshen. That part of Egypt in which the Israelites dwelt 
before the Exodus ; the only part of the land exempt from the 
plagues. 

23 : 6. Gideon's miracle. Judges vi., 37-40. 

23 : footnote. Cowley. Abraham Cowley, an English poet and 
courtier of the seventeenth century ; a great favourite with Lamb. 

23:13. Elysian exemptions. The Elysian Fields were "the 
abode of the blessed, the happy hereafter" of classic mythology. 

23 : 16. Ululantes. Those who were howling. 



•348 NOTES 

23 : 17. Tartarus. The infernal regions of classic mythology, 
the place of torture. 

23 : 20. scrannel pipes. Here Lamb borrows an expression used 
by Milton in Lycidas. Scrannel means "squeaking." 

23: footnote. Garrick, David (1717-1779). "He was a great 
actor and a successful manager, and enjoyed the friendship of the 
most noted men of his day." He went to school to Dr. Samuel 
Johnson. 

23:21. Flaccus. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 b.c), a great 
Roman poet who lived in the age of the Emperor Augustus, 
and wrote lyrics and satires. He is commonly known as 
" Horace." 

23:22. Terence. Publius Terentius Afer (185-159 b.c), a 
Roman comedian. 

23 : 27. Caxon. An obsolete term for a wig ; probably from per- 
sonal surname Caxon. 

25:1. first Grecian. "... The Deputy Grecians were in 
Homer, Cicero, and Demosthenes ; the Grecians in the Greek 
plays and mathematics. . . . Those who became Grecians al- 
ways went to the University, though not always into the Church ; 
which was reckoned a departure from the contract." — Leigh 
Hunt, Autobiography. 

25:14. Cicero. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 b.c), a cele- 
brated Roman orator, philosopher, and statesman. 

25 : 24. mitre. A head-dress worn by bishops, abbots, and in 
certain cases by other distinguished ecclesiastics, regni novitas. 
This Mr. E. Y. Lucas translates " infant realm," pointing out that 
the bishopric of Calcutta was newly created. 

25 : 26. Jewel and Hooker. Divines of the Church of England, 
and theological writers of the sixteenth century.. 

25 : 38. fiery column. See Exodus xiii., 21. 

26 : 5. Mirandula. Pico della Mirandola, a brilliant young 
Italian of the fifteenth century. 



NOTES , 349 

26 : 7. Jamblichus, Plotinus. Greek philosophers. 

26 : 8. Homer, Pindar. Greek poets. 

26:11. old Fuller. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an English 
divine and writer. Author of The History of the Holy Warre^ His- 
tory of the University of England^ History of the Worthies of Eng- 
land. In the last-named of these works is the description of the 
'' wit-combats " between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. C. V. Le G. 
Charles Valentine Le Grice, an intimate friend of Lamb's. 

26 : 19. Allen. Allen, Middle ton, the two brothers Le Grice, 
Favell, and Thornton, are all described by Leigh Hunt, also in his 
Autobiography^ where some of these same anecdotes are repeated. 

26:26. Nireus formosus. ^'Nireus, the most beauteous man 
that came up under Ilios of all the Danaans, after the noble 
son of Peleus." — Iliad^ Bk. IL Translation by Lang, Leaf, and 
Myers. 

THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
London Magazine., December, 1820. 

27 : 10. Parthians, Medes, Elamites. — Acts ii. , 9. 

27 : 13. port. Carriage or demeanour (French j^or^er, from Latin 
porto, " carry"). 

27 : 16. lean and suspicious. Here Lamb may have had in mind 
Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar, I., li., 194-195 : — 

*' Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look ; 
He thinks too much : such men are dangerous.** 

27: 19. Alcibiades. An Athenian politician and general (450- 
404 B.C.), a pupil of Socrates ; celebrated for his beauty, his tal- 
ents, and his wilfulness. Falstaff. A witty old knight in Shake- 
speare's Henry IV. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729). English 
essayist and dramatist. With Joseph Addison, he started the first 
English periodical. The Spectator. 



350 NOTES 

27:20. Brinsley. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), 
statesman and dramatist. Author of the celebrated comedies 
The Bivals and The School for Scandal. 

27 : 23. no more thought than lilies. St. Matthew vi., 28. 

27 : 26. meum and tuum. What is mine and what is thine. 

27 : 27. Tooke. Assumed name of John Home, politician, and 
writer on philosophy. Known as " Home Tooke." 

27 : 30. primitive community. — Acts ii., 44. 

27: 31. the, true taxer . . . taxed. A reference to the decree of 
Caesar Augustus, "that the whole world should be enrolled." — 
St. Luke ii., 1. 

27 : 34. obolary. The obolus was a coin of ancient Greece, 
worth about one and halfpence in English money, — three cents 
in ours; "obolary" would mean then "impecunious," because 
possessed only of small coins. 

28:6. Candlemas. February 2, Feast of the Purification of 
Mary the Mother of Christ. Feast of Holy Michael, September 
29 ; i.e. of St. Michael the Archangel. These days were " quarter- 
days," "set seasons" for payment. 

28 : 7. lene tormentum. — Horace, Odes, Bk. III., XXI. " Thou 
appliest a gentle spur to the usually ungenial temper." 

28 : 15. reversion promised. — Proverbs xix., 17. 

28 : 16. Lazarus and Dives. See St. Luke xvi., 20-31. 

28:37. Alexander TIL, "The Great" (356-323 e.g.). A fa- 
mous king of Macedon, and a great conqueror, son of Philip of 
Macedon. 

29 : 28. Hagar's offspring. — Genesis xxi. 
29 : 29. fisc. A royal, or state, treasury. 

29 : 34. cana fides. Honour due to gray hairs. Virgil, ^neid, 
L, 292. 

30 : 2. mumping. From " mumper," a beggar. " Mump," " to 
mumble, . . . implore alms in a low voice." 

30 : 16. Comberbatch. Coleridge is here referred to by the name 



NOTES 351 

under which he had early in life enlisted, Silas Titus Comberbach. 
He is referred to elsewhere in the essay as C, or S. T. C. 

The paragraphs that follow on the borrowing and lending of 
books are paralleled in several amusing letters from Lamb to 
Wordsworth and to Coleridge. One of these opens : — 

" Dear Coleridge : Why will you make your visits, which should 
give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends ? You never come but 
you take away some folio that is part of my existence " ; and 
closes: "My third shelf (northern compartment) from the top has 
two devilish gaps, where you have knocked out its two eye-teeth. 

*' Your wronged friend, 

" Charles Lamb." 

30 : 20. Switzer-like. As large as the tall Swiss who make up 
the "Swiss Guard." This name originally belonged to Swiss mer- 
cenary troops in the service of the French ; it is now given to the 
guard of the Pope. Guild-hall giants. Guild-hall, the old "coun- 
cil-hall of the city of London, founded 1411, and restored after the 
fire of 1666." The giants are great wooden figures, known as Gog 
and Magog, which stood originally at the door, "guardant," then, 
of the entrance. 

30 : 22. Opera Bonaventurae. The works of St. Bonaventura. 

30 : 24. Bellarmine, Holy Thomas. Roberto Bellarmino (1542- 
1621), an Italian cardinal and Jesuit theologian. St. Thomas of 
Aquino, or " Aquinas." A Dominican and a famous Italian theolo- 
gian of the thirteenth century. 

30 : 26. Ascapart. A legendary giant thirty feet high. He 
figures in the English romance " Bevis of Hampton," and is men- 
tioned by many Elizabethan writers. 

30 : 34. whilom. Once, formerly, or, at times. Anglo-Saxon, 
hioilum. 

31 : 1. Dodsley's dramas. Robert Dodsley in the eighteenth 
century edited a collection of '' Old English Plays " ; among these 
was the Vittoria Goromhona of John Webster, a famous Eng- 



352 NOTES 

lish dramatist of the seventeenth century, who wrote tragedy. 
See Lamb's Dramatic Specimens, 

31 : 3. Refuse. Rejected, not remembered, or considered. 

31 : 4. Anatomy of Melancholy. By Robert Burton (1577- 
1640), a curious work treating of the causes and symptoms of 
melancholy, and of its cure ; often referred to by Lamb. 

31 : 5. Complete Angler. By Izaak Walton (1593-1683), known 
as the " Father of Angling." This book Lamb says was the delight 
of his childhood. He calls it, in 1819, " so old a darling of mine "; 
and writes to Wordsworth once, " Izaak Walton hallows any page 
in which his revered name appears." 

31 : 6. John Buncle. A romance by Thomas Amory, published 
1756 and 1766. A favourite with Lamb, and with his friend 
William Hazlitt. The hero of the book married seven times, after 
very short intervals. 

31 : 18. Deodands. A deodand was anything forfeited to the 
crown, to be applied to pious uses. 

31 : 27. Margaret Newcastle. "The Life of the Thrice Noble, 
High and Puissant Prince, William Cavendish, and Earl of New- 
castle ; by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, 
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, his Wife." See Introduction, 
p. xix. 

32 : 4. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. A poet and statesman. 
He composed his own epitaph, which reads: "Fulke Greville, ser- 
vant to Queen Elizabeth, councillor to King James, and friend to 
Sir Philip Sidney." 

32 : 7. Zimmerman. Johann George Zimmerman, a Swiss phy- 
sician and philosophical writer. Author of ijher die Einsamkeit, 
" On Solitude," 1755. 

32 : 16. Daniel. Samuel Daniel. An English poet, contempo- 
rary with Edmund Spenser, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It 
has been suggested that his sister. Rose Daniel, was the Rosalinde 
of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, her name expressed in anagram., 



NOTES 353 

NEW YEAR'S EVE 

London Magazine^ January, 1821. 

In his notes (p. 329) Mr. E. V. Lucas quotes a commentary on 
this essay, by Horace Smith (one of the authors of BejecCed Ad- 
dresses), printed anonymously in the London Magazine, March, 
1821. Part of it reads as follows : — 

"Ha! I exclaimed, thou art the very Janus who hast always 
delighted in antithetical presentments ; who lovest to exhibit thy 
tragic face in its most doleful gloom, that thou mayst incontinently 
turn upon us the sunshine of thy comic smile. — Thou wouldst not 
paint the miseries endured by a friendless boy at Christ's without 
a companion piece, portraying the enjoyments of a more fortunate 
youngster." See Introduction, p. xxi, for further comment on 
the humour of this essay. 

33 : 5. a contemporary. Coleridge, in his Ode on the Departing 
Year. 

33 : 30. Alice W n. See Introduction, p. xii. 

34 : 22. God help thee, Ella, etc. Compare the exclamation of 
Quince in Shakespeare's Midsummer NighVs Dream, III., i., 121-122. 

35 : 14. Audits. Periodical settlement, or rendering of accounts. 

35 : 20. like a weaver's shuttle. Job vii., 6. 

35 : 23. Reluct. To exhibit reluctance, to struggle against. 
Obsolete or archaic. 

35 : 33. Lavinian shores. When jEneas fled from Troy he 
settled upon the Lavinian shore in Italy. See the opening lines 
)f Virgil's ^neid. Compare with this paragraph the letter to 
I!oleridge quoted on p. xiii of Introduction. 

36 : 15. Burgeon. To bud, to grow, to flourish. Poetical. 

36 : 21. sickly sister. The moon, Diana, sister of Phoebus 
!^pollo the sun-god. 

36 : 22. in the Canticles. Solomon's Canticle of Canticles, 
:h. VIII. 

2a 



354 NOTES 

36 : 23. the Persian. Zoroaster, founder of the national reli- 
gion of Persia, in which '* the elements, — earth, air, fire, and 
water, but especially fire, receive homage as creations of Ahuram- 
azda," ''the supreme god of light." 

37 : 16. Mr. Cotton. Charles Cotton, a contemporary of Wal- 
ton ; he wrote a continuation of the Complete Angler. 

38 : 40. Spa. A fashionable seventeenth-century watering- 
place. 

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

London Magazine^ February, 1821. 

Mrs. Battle has been compared with Lamb's *'grandam," 
described in ''Dream-Children," and in "Blakesmoor in 

H shire." It has also been suggested that she was intended 

for Mrs. Burney, — wife of Lamb's friend Admiral James Burney. 
But Barry Cornwall says that Mrs. Battle was an imaginary per- 
son, and in this Canon Ainger follows him. Admiral Burney was 
the brother of Fanny Burney (Madame d'Arblay, author of Eve- 
lina) o He and his son Martin were dear friends of Lamb. 

40: 7. Pope. Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the greatest name 
in the classical school of English poetry of the eighteenth century. 
Author of many great satires and epistles in verse, of The Essay on 
Criticism^ The Essay on Man^ and of the brilliant mock-heroic 
poem here referred to. The Bape of the Lock. 

40: 13. Mr. Bowles. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), an 
English poet, whose sonnets Lamb and Coleridge greatly admired. 

40 : 21. Spadille. The ace of spades. 

40 : 25. Sans Prendre Vole. Playing without a partner, to take 
all the tricks. 

40:36. Machiavel. Niccolo Machiavelli (Mak-i-a-vel'li) (1469- 
1527), a celebrated Italian statesman and author. 

41 : 31. clear Vandykes. Sir Anthony Van Dyke, or Van Dyck 
(1599-1641), a famous Flemish painter. Court painter to Charles 
I. of England. 



NOTES 355 

41 : 32. Paul Potters. Paul Potter (1625-1654), a noted Dutch 
portrait painter, and painter of animals. 

41 : 38. Pam. Thfe knave of clubs. 

42 : 18. old Walter Plumer. See *' South-Sea House," p. 7. 

45 : 2. Bridget Elia. The name by which Lamb refers to his 

sister, Mary Lamb, in his essays. 
45 : 16. capotted. '' To capot" means "to win all the cards." 
45 : 24. ever playing. Mr. G. A. Wauchope, in his notes to this 

essay, suggests here a parallel with the idea of "arrested life" in 

Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 

London Magazine^ March, 1821. 

46:1. Defoe. Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), English novelist and 
political writer ; he had his ears cropped, and was placed in the 
pillory for writing a certain political pamphlet. He was the author 
of the famous novel, Bohinson Crusoe. 

46: 19. Alice W n. See Introduction, p. xii. 

47 : 9. Sostenuto ; adagio. Directions for musical time, mean- 
ing "prolonged," slowly. 

47: 11. Baralipton. A term used in logic. 

47: 14. Jubal. Genesis iv., 21. 

48:4. Hades. The underground kingdom of Pluto in classic 
mythology. 

48 : 8. Party in a parlour, etc. Lines which stood in Words- 
worth's Peter Bell ; later omitted. 

48 : 12. long a-dying. King Charles II. on his death-bed begged 
his courtiers to excuse him for being "so unconscionable a time 
in dying." 

48:20. Mime. From a Greek work meaning "to imitate," an 
imitation, a dramatic entertainment. 



356 NOTES 

48:26. disappointing book in Patmos. Apocalypse (Revela- 
tions) X., 10. 

49; 7. subrusticus pudor. ''Awkward bashfulness," from the 
Letters of Cicero. 

49: 16. Nov . Lamb's friend Vincent Novello, a musician 

and composer. It was to his daughter Clara that Lamb addressed 
some verses first published in the Athenceum, July 26, and be- 
ginning : — 

*' The gods have made me most unmusical." 

49 : 23, 25. that ... or that other. Psalms liv. and xviii. 

50 : 2. Arion. A famous musician of Greek legend, forced by 
mariners who wished to rob him to cast himself overboard. But 
the beauty of his music had brought round the vessel a crowd of 
dolphins, one of whom carried him to land on its back. 

50: 3. Haydn, etc. Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadous 
Mozart, Austrian musicians and composers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Tritons. Water deities of classic mythology. Bach, etc. 
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Ludwigvan Beethoven (1770- 
1827), German musicians and composers. 

50 : 9. triple tiara. A cylindrical head-dress pointed at the top 
and surrounded with three crowns ; worn by the Pope as a symbol 
of sovereignty, and replaced by the mitre at ceremonies of a purely 
spiritual character. 

50 : 13. malleus hereticorum. " Hammer of Heretics," surname 
of a G-erman, Johann Faber, who vehemently opposed the Refor- 
mation, heresiarch. Leader of a heresy. 

50 : 14. Marcion,' etc. Reference to the founders of three hereti- 
cal sects in the early centuries of the Christian era. 

50 : 15. Gog and Magog. Referred to in Apocalypse (Revela- 
tions) XX., 7-9, as the enemies who shall fight against the Church 
towards the end of the world. 



irOTES 357 



ALL FOOLS' DAY 

London Magazine. Dated at end of the essay, 1st April, 182L 

50 : 31. He that meets me, etc. Reference to the meeting of 
Jacques with Touchstone the Jester, Shakespeare's As You Like 
It, XL, vii., 12. 

50 : 32. Stultus sum. I am a fool. 

51 : 5. catch. "In music originally an unaccompanied round 
for three or more voices, written as a continuous melody." Look 
for this song in As You Like It, IL, v. 

51 : 10. Give him. Toast him. 

51 : 14. Dust away. Dust, to strike or beat. 

The lines from Paradise Lost appended as footnotes in the Lon- 
don Magazine, and here to the names Empedocles, Cleombrotus, 
and Gebir, were omitted in the 1823 edition. 

51 : 24. Calenturists. Sufferers from ''calenture"; in his de- 
lirium the patient fancies the sea to be green fields, and wishes to 
leap into it. 

51 : 25. Gebir is not a Scriptural character; it was Lamb's idea 
to connect him with the building of the tower of Babel. Gebir, 
or Geber, was an Arabian alchemist of the eighth century. A poem 
Gebir was written by the English poet, Walter Savage Landor ; 
the hero of this is a prince of Spain. 

52 : 13. Master Raymund Lully. An alchemist of the thirteenth 
century. 

52 ; 15. Duns. Duns Scotus, a learned monk of the thirteenth 
century. 

52 : 20-4. Stephen, Cokes, Aguecheek, Shallow, Silence, Slen- 
der. Reference to famous simpletons in literature ; the first two 
in plays by Ben Jonson (1573-1637), poet and dramatist, the con- 
temporary and friend of Shakespeare ; the next four in plays by 
Shakespeare. 

52 : 35. King Pandion, etc. Lines from To a Nightingale, by 



358 NOTES 

Richard Barnfield. To be found in Palgrave^s Golden Treasury, 
Pandion, king of Athens, was the father of Philomela in Greek 
legend, who was changed into a nightingale. 

52 : 38. Quisada. Don Quixote (ke-ho'te) de la Mancha, the 
Spanish gentleman who sets forth with his squire Sancho Panza to 
seek knightly adventures ; hero of the romance by Miguel de Cer- 
vantes, published, Part I., 1605, Part II., 1615. 

53:9. Malvolian smile. Shakespeare's Ti(?e(/i{/i iVi^/i^, III., i v. 

53 : 10. Gay. John Gay, an English poet and dramatist con- 
temporary with Pope. 

54 : 5. white boys. Pavourites. 



A QUAKER'S MEETING 

London Magazine^ April, 1821. 

Throughout Lamb's letters there are evidences of his interest in 
the Quakers, and of his liking for much in their spirit and attitude. 
One of his friendships, to which we owe many delightful letters, 
was with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. His charming poem, 
To Hester^ was written to the memory of a young Quakeress 
whom he knew merely by sight, in Pentonville. 

54 : 31. thy casements. A reminiscence perhaps of Shylock's 
words in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice^ II., v., 34. 

*' But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements." 

54 : 33. self -mistrusting Ulysses. Who stopped his own ears, 
and those of his crew, with wax, lest they might be unable to re- 
sist the song of the Sirens. 

55 : 19. The Carthusian. The Carthusian order of monks, 
founded by St. Bruno in 1086, took their name from the valley in 
which they first settled, La Chartreuse. Their monasteries were 
thence called *' Chartreuses," corrupted in English to " Charter 



NOTES 359 

House." The order was characterized by rigorous austerity and 
self -discipline. 

56 : 15. Fox. George Fox, founder of the society of Friends. 

56 : 25. Penn. William Penn, a Friend who received the grant 
of Pennsylvania, and founded Philadelphia, the Quaker City, 1682. 
Both Fox and Penn were arrested in England under the Conven- 
ticle Act. 

56 : 32. Wesley. John Wesley (1703-1791), English divine, and 
founder of Methodism. 

57 : 12. John Woolman. An American Friend, born in New 
Jersey, 1720. His Journal was a great favourite with Lamb. 

57 : 36. Orgasm. Excitement. 

58 : 16. Dis. Pluto, god of the underworld. The Loves playing 
with Proserpina fled at the approach of Dis, who carried her away 
from the Vale of Enna to Tartarus (see Notes, p. 348). 

58 : 22. Trophonius. An oracle in Boeotia ; it returned answers 
which made those who consulted it melancholy and dejected. 

58 : 36. Whitsun-conferences. Yearly meetings of the Friends. 
Whitsun, or Whit-Sunday, the common name in England for Pente- 
cost, meaning White Sunday ; possibly a reference to the white 
robe of baptism, since baptism was for many ages administered at 
Easter and at Pentecost. 

58 : 38. the Shining Ones. A term borrowed from Bunyan's 
Pilgrim'' s Progress. 

Compare with the sentiment of this closing paragraph, the lines 
written by Lamb for the album of Bernard Barton's daughter. 
The last stanza reads: — 

** Whitest thoughts, in whitest dress, 
Candid meanings, best express 
Mind of quiet Quakeress." 

With this essay, compare Lamb's letter to Coleridge, February 
13, 1797, in which he writes that he has been attracted to ** a most 



360 NOTES 

capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's 
No Cross, No Crowns 

THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOL-MASTER 

London Magazine, May, 1821. 

59 : 8. Ortelius. A Flemish geographer of the sixteenth century, 

59 : 31. a better man. Shakespeare. See Ben Jonson's Lines 
to the Memory of my Beloved Master William Shakespeare and 
What he hath left Us. " And though thou hadst small Latin and 
less Greek." 

62 : 12. Lily, Linacre. Scholars of the time of Shakespeare. 

62:23. Flori, Spici-legia, Anthologies — of flowers and spices, 
as it were. 

62 : 25-8. Basileus, Pamela, Philoclea, Mopsa, Damcetas. Char- 
acters in Sir Philip Sidney's pastoral Arcadia. 

62 : 27. Tyro. A novice. From Latin tiro, a newly levied 
soldier. 

62 : 29. Colet. John Colet, founder of St. Paul's School, 1512. 

63 : 1. Solon, Lycurgus. An Athenian and a Spartan legislator. 

63 : 22. cum multis aliis. With many others. 

63 : 24. Tractate. By Milton. 

63 : 31. mollia tempota fandi. Virgil's ^neid, IV., 293-294, *' et 
quae mollissima tempora fandi." And what were the most favour- 
able times for speech. 

VALENTINE'S DAY 

Published first in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, 1819 ; republished in 
his Indicator, February 14, 1821, signed with four stars. Here it 
forms part of an article, *' Donne's and Drayton's Lines on Valen- 
tine's Day, with remarks." 

67 : 4. Opening line. From a poem by John Donne, in the seven- 
teenth century, beginning '' Hail, Bishop Valentine ! " 



NOTES 361 

St. Valentine, a Roman Christian, was martyred February 14, 
270. He was not a bishop. As his feast-day immediately preceded 
that of the goddess Juno during the Roman Lupercalia, some of the 
heathen customs were continued as if in his honour ; so he became 
associated with the choice of lovers on this day. 

67 : 5. rubric. Lamb uses the word here to mean direction from 
the Church. 

67 : 6. flamen. In the ancient Roman religion, a priest 
ievoted to the service of one particular deity. Archflamen. A 
tiigh priest. 

67 : 6. Hymen. The classic god of marriage. 

67 : 10. rochet. A linen vestment proper only to bishops and 
abbots, decent. Suitable or seemly. 

67:12. Mitred father . . . Jerome, Ambrose, Cyril. St. Am- 
brose and St. Cyril were bishops in the early centuries of Chris- 
tianity ; St. Jerome, a " Father of the Church," translated the Bible 
into Latin ; his is the Vulgate Version. 

67 : 14. Austin. English name of St. Augustine, bishop of 
Hippo. Author Of the Confessions and of The City of God, 

67 : 15. Origen. One of the Greek fathers of the Church in the 
ihird century. 

67 : 16. Bull, Parker, Whitgift. Bishops of the English Church 
n the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries. 

67: 18. Brushed . . . wings. Line from Paradise Lost^ I., 768. 

67: 20. crosier. Or pastoral staff, given to a bishop at the time 
)f his consecration, as a symbol of authority. 

67 : 23. ycleped. Also yclept. Past participle of the old verb 
'clepe," meaning "called." Used now only archaically. 

67 : 24. forspent. Exhausted by overexertion. 

68 : 21. fatal entrance of Duncan. Shakespeare, Macbeth^ I., v., 
19-40. 

68:34. a madrigal. *'A mediaeval poem or song, amorous, 
)astoral, or descriptive." 



362 NOTES 



1 



69:21. Ovid. Publius Ovidius Naso, a Roman poet of the 
Augustan age. The stories of the lovers here referred to are to be 
found in his Metamorphoses and in his Heroides^ or stories of 
heroines who have perished for love. 

69:23. Pyramus and Thisbe. *'The handsomest youth" and 
*'the fairest maiden in all Babylonia." Their parents forbade 
their marrying, but they conversed With, each other through a gap 
in the wall between their houses. Dido, queen of Carthage, killed 
herself for love of ^neas. See Virgil's ^neid. 

69 : 24. Hero and Leander. Leander swam the Hellespont to 
visit his love, Hero of Sestos. One night he was drowned, and 
Hero cast herself into the sea in despair. Cayster. A river in 
Ionia, the fabled resort of swans. 

69 : 26. Iris. The rainbow. 

70 : 3. sings poor Ophelia. Shakespeare, Hamlet^ IV. , v. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

London Magazine^ August, 1821. The original title was, Jews^ 
Quakers^ Scotchmen, and Other Imperfect Sympathies, 

70: 18. admired. Here Lamb uses the word in its original sense, 
*' to wonder at " (Latin, admirari). 

71 : 10. anti-Caledonian. Caledonia was the old Roman name 
for Scotland. 

71 : footnote, old Hey wood. Thomas Hey wood, an actor, and a 
famous English dramatist of the seventeenth century. 

72: 16. born in panoply. Minerva (Greek, Pallas Athene), the 
Roman goddess of wisdom, sprang from the head of Jupiter com- 
pletely armed. 

73:13. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). A famous Italian 
painter. 

73:29. Burns. Robert Burns (1759-1796), a famous Scottish 



NOTES 363 

lyric poet. *' The poet of homely human nature, not half so homely 
or prosaic as it seems." 

73 : 34. Swift. Jonathan Swift (1667-1746), a celebrated Eng- 
lish satirist and man of letters. His most popular satire is Gitl- 
liver^s Travels. 

74 : 10. Thomson. James Thomson, a British poet of the 
eighteenth century, born in Scotland. Author of The Seasons, The 
Castle of Indolence, etc. He did not write in the Scotch dialect. 

74: 11. Smollett. Tobias George Smollett, a British novelist of 
the eighteenth century, born in Scotland. Author of Boderick 
Bandom, here referred to, and of Humphrey Clinker. 

74 : 14. Hume. David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and his- 
torian of the eighteenth century. 

74:18. Stonehenge. A prehistoric monument in Salisbury 
Plain, Wiltshire, England. 

74.19. Nonage. I.e. non-age, not-age. **The period of legal 
infancy," minority. 

74: 23. Hugh of Lincoln. According to legend, this little Chris- 
tian boy was put to death by the Jews. The ballad telling his 
;tory may be found in Percy's Beliques of Ancient Bomance 
Poetry. The legend is the subject of one of Chaucer's Canterbury 
Tales, told by the Prioresse. 

75: 13. B. John Braham, tenor singer and composer. 

75 : 17. the Shibboleth. By their pronouncing the word Schibbo- 
eth as ''Sibboleth" the Ephraimites betrayed themselves to their 
snemies the Galaadites, who had put them to this test. Judges 
:ii., 6-6. 

75:23. Kemble. John Philip Kemble, a celebrated English 

ragedian, the brother of the celebrated Mrs. Siddons, and uncle of 

^anny Kemble. 

75:31. Jael. The Israelite woman who slew Sisera. Judges iv. 

76 : 7. Desdemona. The wife of the Moor in Shakespeare's 

khello. 



364 NOTES 

76 : 13. John Evelyn. An English author of the seventeenth 
century. His memoirs (including his letters and his diary) are 
especially famous. 

With the close of this essay compare Lamb's letter to Bernard 
Barton, March 11, 1823. " The Quaker incident did not happen to 
me, but to Carlisle the surgeon" ; i.e. Sir Anthony Carlisle. The 
anecdote, Talfourd says, "had excited some gentle remonstrance 
on the part of Barton's sister." 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT EEARS 

London Magazine^ October, 1821. 

78 : 30. Corn was lodged. Beaten down. See Shakespeare, 
Macbeth, VL, i., 55, and Bichard IL, III., iii., 161-163. 

" We'll make foul weather with despised tears ; 
Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer com, 
And make a dearth in this revolting land." 

79 : 4-9. Eld. Old age. Obsolete and poetical in all uses. Assert 
his metaphor. To bespeak, or bear evidence of, it. This meaning 
of "assert" is obsolete. 

79; 23. Prospero. The magician in Shakespeare's ITewipes^. 

79:28. Spenser. Edmund Spenser (1552-1598), one of the 
greatest English poets. Author of the Faerie Queene, The Shep- 
heardes Calendar, Prothalamion, Epithalamion, and the Amoretti, 
Guyon. The knight who personifies Temperance, and is put to the 
test by the treasures in the cave of Mammon in Bk. II., Canto VII. 
of the Faerie Queene. 

79 : 30. Take assay. To test. 

80 : 20. Monster. Slain by St. George in the person of the Red- 
Cross Knight. Faerie Queene, Bk. I. 



NOTES 365 

82 : 9. T. H. Thornton Hunt, son of Lamb's intimate friend, 
Leigh Hunt (see Introduction, p. xiv). This was the passage 
chosen by Southey for quotation in his attack on Hunt in the 
Quarterly. See Introduction, p. xvii. 

82 : 20. Gorgons, etc. Gorgons, three sisters in Greek mythology, 
typifying the terrors of the sea. Medusa, the most frightful, whose 
locks were serpents, was slain by Perseus. The Hydra was a nine- 
headed monster slain by Hercules. The Chimaera was a fire- 
breathing monster, part lion, part goat, part dragon, slain by 
Bellerophon mounted on Pegasus. Calaeno. The names of the 
harpies were Calseno, JEUo, Ocypete. 

82 : 22. Archetype. The original model from which copies are 
made. 

83 : 37. nereids. Sea-nymphs in classic mythology. 

84:12. Ino Leiicothea. The "white goddess." A mortal who 
sprang into the sea to escape her mad husband, and was made a 
goddess. Compare Milton's lines on the sea-deities at the close of 
Comus. 

MY RELATIONS 

London Magazine^ June, 1821. 

85 : 14. Thomas k Kempis. A German. Superior of an Augus- 
tinian convent in the fifteenth century. Author of The Imitation, 
or Following of Christ. 

86: 7. James Elia. The name by which Lamb always refers to 
his brother (Introduction, p. x) in his essays. 

86:17. Yorick . . . Shandean. Yorick is a character in Tris- 
tram Shandy, by Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768), a celebrated Eng- 
lish novelist and humourist. He was the author also of A Senti- 
mental Journey through France and Italy, 

87:2. Domenichino (Do-men-e-ke'no) (1581-1641). A cele- 
brated Italian artist. 



366 ^OTES 

87 : 8. Charles XII. of Sweden. Famous soldier and conqueror 
of the early part of the eighteenth century. 

" He left the name at which the world grew pale, 
To paint a moral, or adorn a tale." 

— Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes. 

87:9. Upon instinct. "Instinct is a great matter; I was a 
coward now upon instinct." Falstaff in Henry IV., Part I., II., 
iv., 300. 

87 : 14. Cham of Tartary. Cham, or Khan, the title of sovereign 
princes of Tartar countries. Used here to signify a despot. 

88 : 9. His lungs shall crow, etc. 

" Jacques. . . . When I did hear 

The motley fool thus moral on the time, 
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer." 

— Shakespeare, As You Like It, II., vii., 29-30. 

88: 12. Compare with this Thomas Gray's comment at the close 
of his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. 

88 : 22. Claude, etc. Claude Lorrain, a celebrated French land- 
scape painter, and Hobbima (Hob^be-ma), a Dutch landscape 
painter ; both of the seventeenth century. 

89:6. Raphael. Raffaello Sanzio, or Santi (1483-1520), a 
celebrated Italian painter. 

89:10. Caracci (Kar-ra'che), Annibale, and Lodovico, cousins. 
Italian painters of the sixteenth century. Lodovico Carracci was 
a famous teacher, and the founder of the Bolognese School. 

89 : 12. Luca Giordano ( Jor-da'no) and Carlo Marratta (Ma- 
rat'ta), Italian painters of the seventeenth century. 

89:19. Hallowmass. Short for *' All-hallows-mass," or All 
Saints' Mass-Day. Feast of All Saints, November 1. 

90 : 22. Compare with the sentiment here expressed. Lamb's 
satirical comment in a letter to Southey, on the " Humane Society, 



NOTES 367 

who walk in procession once a year with all the objects of their 
charity before them, to return God thanks for giving them such 
benevolent hearts." 

The essay closed in the London Magazine^ " Till then, farewell, 
Elia." 

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

London Magazine^ July, 1821. 

91 : 7. The rash king's offspring. The daughter of Jepthah, or 
Jepthe, ruler of the people of Galaad. Judges xi., 30-40. 

92: 24. Speak to it. '* Answer for, attest, account for." 

92 : 31. Closet of good old English reading. The library of 
Samuel Salt (see Introduction, p. xx) in the Temple. 

94 : 2. The poet. William Wordsworth, in Yarroio Visited. 

94 ; 7. Find a parallel in this line to Milton's Comus, 1. 263. 

94 : 38. The meeting of the two scriptural cousins. See St. 
Lukei., 39-40. 

95 : 6. B. F. Lamb's friend Barron Field, whom he addresses in 
Distant Correspondents, 

MODERN GALLANTRY 

London Magazine, November, 1822. 

96 : 9. Dorimant. A fine gentleman in a comedy by Sir George 
Etherege, intended as a portrait of the Earl of Rochester, a con- 
temporary of Etherege, a poet and courtier in the reign of 
Charles II. 

97 : 10. Joseph Paice. See Introduction, p. xxi. 

97 : 37. Preux Chevalier. A valiant knightly defender. 

97 : 38. Sir Calidore. The character in Spenser's Faerie Queene, 
Bk. VI., who typifies Courtesy ; a portrait of Sir Philip Sidney. 
Sir Tristan, or Tristram, of Lyonesse, one of the knights of King 
Arthur's Order of the Round Table. 



368 NOTES 

99:1. discovered. The old use of ''discover," to mean "ex^ 
hibit." 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

London 3Iagazine, September, 1821. 

'^On the south side of Fleet Street, near to where it adjoins' 
Temple Bar, lies the Inner Temple. . . . About seven hundred 
years ago it was the abiding place of the Knights Templars, who 
erected there a church, which still uplifts its round tower (its sole 
relic) for the wonder of modern times." — Barry Cornwall, 
Memoir of Charles Lamb. 

Read the descriptions of the Temple and the Temple Gardens in 
Thackeray's novel, Fendennis^ Ch. XXX. and L. 

100 : 15. Hight. Called, or named. Archaic. 

100 : 18. kindly engendure. A few lines above the passage here 
quoted from the Frothalamion, Spenser speaks of London, his 
birthplace, as "my most kyndly nurse." 

100 : 21. Naiades. Nymphs in classic mythology, who presided 
over brooks and fountains. 

loi : 18. Marvell. Andrew Marvell, an English poet and satir- 
ist of the seventeenth century, who assisted Milton with the Latin 
Secretaryship of the Commonwealth. Marvell was a great favourite 
with Lamb. 

103 : ^9- Elisha bear. See 4 Kings ii., 23-24. 
103 : 34. Spinous. Latin spinosus. Having spines, full of 

thorns or spines, thorny. 

104 : 3. Level. Lamb's own father, John Lamb. See Introduc- 
tion, p. XX. 

105 : 22. Hie currus, etc. A reference to Virgil's ^neid^ Bk. I., 
16-17, where Juno is described as caring especially for Carthage ; 
" Here she kept her arms, here her chariot of war.'* 

105 : 25. Elwes. John Elwes, a noted English miser. 



I 



I 



J 



NOTES 369 

io6:3. ** Flapper." In Gulliver'' s Travels a person who flaps 
or strikes ; hence after Swift, one who jogs the memory. 

io6:24. Prior. Matthew Prior (1664-1721), an English poet. 

io8 : 17. Friar Bacon. Roger Bacon, an English philosopher of 
the thirteenth century ; he joined the order of Franciscan monks. 
He appears in Robert Greene's (1560-1592) comedy, Friar Bacon 
and Friar Bungay. 

io8 : 35. Michael Angelo's Moses. Michael Angelo, or Michel- 
angelo, Buonarroti (1475-1564), a famous Italian sculptor, painter, 
architect, and poet. 

io8 : 36. Baron Maseres. See mention of him in a letter from 
Lamb to Manning, April, 1801. 

log : 21. R. N. Mr. Randall Norris. See Introduction, p. xii. 

log : 37. Wots. Knows. Archaic. 

no : 10. Hooker. Theologian of the Church of England. Ap- 
pointed master of the Temple, 1585. 

no : 16. Younkers. Younker, a lad, a youngster (German, 
jung herr). 

no : 18. Old Worthies. Term borrowed from title of Fuller's 
work ; see Notes, p. 349. 

GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

London Magazine^ November, 1821. 

Ill : 36. Rams hospes. An infrequent guest. 

113 : 26. Heliogabalus. Or Elagabalus, a luxurious Roman em- 
peror of the third century. 

113 : 33. Fantasies. Fancy, or imagination. 

115:15. The author of the Rambler. Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
See Notes, p. 338. 

115 : 26. Dagon. A god of the Philistines mentioned in the Old 
Testament, — half man and half fish. 

115:35. Hog's Norton. Mr. E. V. Lucas quotes here an old 
2b 



370 NOTES 

proverb : " I think thou wast born at Hog^-Norton, where piggs 
play upon the organs." 

ii6 : 24. Lucian. A Greek writer of the second century, a.d., 
who satirized the religious beliefs of his time. 

117 : 2. Non tunc, etc. Paralleled by line 19 of Horace's Ars 
Poetica, "Sed nunc non erat his locus." Lamb means, that was 
not the time for such prayers. 

117:11. Horresco ref erens. Remembering, or looking back upon 
it, I shudder. Virgil, ^neid, II., 204. 

MY FIRST PLAY 

London Magazine^ December, 1821. 

117:16. Garrick's. The Drury Lane Theatre was opened in 
1663 ; it was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. Garrick undertook 
the management of it in 1747. 

118: 22. Seneca. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a celebrated Roman 
Stoic philosopher of the first century, a.d. Varro. Marcus Teren- 
tius Varro, a great Roman scholar and author. Made by Julius 
Caesar director of the Public Library. 

118 : 29. Talismans. A talisman was a charm. 

119 : 8. nonpareils. A kind of pear. 

119:80. Artaxerxes. Opera by Thomas Augustine Arne ; the 
libretto translated from t\\Q Artaserse of Metastasio, an Italian 
lyric poet of the eighteenth century. 

120 : 7. St. Denys. The patron saint of France. After he was 
beheaded he arose and carried his head. 

120 : 14. Lud. The legendary founder of London. 

120 : 15. dagger of lath. Carried by the Vice in the Old Moral- 
ity Plays. See Shakespeare, Tioelfth Night, IV., ii., 134-138. 
This character was the forerunner of the jester and the clown on 
the English stage. 

120 : 21. The Way of the World. By William Congreve (1670- 



NOTES 371 

1729). One of the greatest writers of English comedy. Other 
famous plays by him are Love for Love and The Mourning Bride. 
121 : 24. Mrs. Siddons (1755-1831). Sarah Kemble, a cele- 
brated tragic actress. Her greatest r61e was Lady Macbeth. Sir 
Joshua Reynolds painted her as the " Tragic Muse." 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

London Magazine^ January, 1822. 

This essay was written a few months after the death of Lamb's 
brother, John Lamb, referred to in the essay as John L., elsewhere 
as James Elia. See Introduction, p. x. 

123 : 15. The great house. See Blakesmoor in H shire, 

125 : 3. Alice W — n. See Introduction, p. xii. 

125 : 17. Lethe. One of the rivers of the lower world in classic 
mythology; the ''stream of f orgetf ulness. " 

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 

London Magazine^ March, 1822. 

125 : 22. B. F. Lamb's friend, Barron Field. There is a parallel 
to this letter in Lamb's correspondence with Field, August 31, 
1817 ; and there are a number of letters, in the same amusing 
vein, written to Thomas Manning (Introduction, p. xiii) during 
his absence in China. See one especially, dated December 25, 
1815. 

126 : 29. Munden. Joseph Shepherd Munden. See essay On 
the Acting of Munden. Lamb speaks elsewhere of his ''wonder- 
working face." 

127:30. Flam. Deception. 

128 : 32. Lustring. Or lutestring. French lustring, a glossy silk 
fabric. Obsolete. 



372 NOTES 

i2g:17. melior lutus. Finer clay. 

129:18. sol pater. Sun father. 

129 : 36. Diogenes. A Greek philosopher of the fourth century, 
B.C. It is said that he sought with a lantern through Corinth for 
an honest man. In this passage Lamb has in mind the penal 
colony sent from England to Botany Bay, five miles south of 
Sydney, 1787-1788. 

130 : 18. Delphic voyages. Voyages to the oracle of the Pythian 
Apollo at Delphi in Greece. 

130 : 25. Hare Court, etc. In a letter to Coleridge, June, 1809, 
Lamb writes : — " The rooms are delicious, and the best look back- 
wards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Just 
now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that 
'tis like living in a garden." 

130 : 34. From Milton's Lycidas, 



PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

London Magazine, May, 1822. Second title here, *' A May-Day 
Effusion." 

Canon Ainger has the following note to a letter from Lamb to 
Bernard Barton, May 15, 1824: — 

''James Montgomery, the poet, had this year edited a volume 
of original prose and verse, setting forth the wrongs and sufferings 
of the little chimney-sweepers, for whose relief a society had been 
for some time labouring. The volume was entitled. The Chimney- 
Sweeper's'' Friend, and Climbing-Boys'' Album. Lamb had been 
invited to contribute a poem, but not finding time or inspiration, 
sent instead Blake's verses, The Chimney- Sweeper, then all but 
unknown to the ordinary reader of poetry." 

Lamb called Blake '' the most extraordinary man of his age." 

131 : 15, The peep-peep, etc. Blake's poem opened : — 



NOTES 373 

" When my mother died I was very young, 
And my father sold me while yet my tongue 
Could scarcely cry, ' Weep ! weep ! weep ! weep ! ' " 

131:29. fauces Averni. The jaws of Avernus, Hell; Virgil's 
^neid, VI., 201. 

132:11. kibed. Chafed, chilblained. 

132:34. fuliginous. Sooty. 

133 : 25. saloop. Sassafras tea, flavoured with milk and sugar. 

133 : 35. welkin. The sky, the heavens. Poetical. « 

135 : 8. noble Rachels. Jeremiah xxxi., 15. 

135 : 11. The young Montagu. Who ran away, and at one time 
became a sweep. 

135 : 20. Venus lulled Ascanius, son of ^neas, asleep, and sent 
Cupid to impersonate him.' ^neid^ I., 643-722. 

136:7. incunabula. From Latin for ''swaddling clothes," 
hence, cradle clothes. 

136:18. The fair of St. Bartholomew. A national fair held 
in Smithfield, from the twelfth century until 1840. 

136:26. quoited. Quoit, to throw as a quoit; to throw. So 
used in Shakespeare. 

136 : 27. The wedding garment. St. Matthew xxii., 11-13. 

137:38. Golden lads, etc. Shakespeare, Cymbeline, IV., ii., 
262-263. 

138 : 2. He carried away, etc. This praise recalls Dr. Johnson's 
words on David Garrick, the actor, " His death eclipsed the gayety 
of nations." Compare also what Lamb says of Munden, Notes, 
p. 378. 

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE 
METROPOLIS 

London Magazine^ June, 1822. 

138: 7. besom.' A broom; originally , twigs bound round a handle. 



374 NOTES 

138 : 8. Alcides' club. Alcides, the Greek name for Hercules ; 
the club with which he fought the Hydra. 

138 : 17. Bellum ad exterminationem. War to the death. 

138 : 30. Dionysius. The Younger ; tyrant of Syracuse. Fi- 
nally expelled in 343 b.c. 

139 : 2. Belisarius. A great general of the Byzantine Empire in 
the sixth century. There was a story that in his old age he was 
blind, and was forced to beg. 

139: 5. The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. An old English 
ballffti to be found in Percy's Beliques of Ancient Bomance Poetry. 

139: 25. Lear. In Shakespeare's tragedy of that name. 

139 : 26. Cresseid, or Cressida. A character famous for her 
fickleness ; invented by a trouv^re of the twelfth century. 

139 : 33. Semiramis. The Assyrian queen who built Babylon. 

141 : 3. spital sermons. Special sermons preached for the 
Christ's Hospital boys. 

141:7. Look . . . there. Shakespeare, As You Like It, II., i., 
56-57. 

141 : 8. Those old blind Tobits. " And his father that was blind 
rising up, began to run stumbling with his feet ; and giving a ser- 
vant his hand, went to meet his son." — Tobias xi., 10. 

143 : 20. Antaeus. Giant wrestler, the son of Neptune and 
Terra, the earth, who only gained strength when thrown to the 
earth. 

143 : 22. Elgin marble. A collection of marbles of the Greek 
sculptor Phidias, which once decorated the Parthenon in Athens, 
was brought to London in 1801-1803 by Lord Elgin. It is now in 
the British Museum. 

143 : 26. Mandrake. A vegetable resembling the human figure, 

143 : 29. Centaur. Strange wild people of classic mythology, 
half man, half horse ; they engaged in a deadly battle with the 
Lapithse at a wedding feast. 

143 : 33. Os sublime. '' Upward-looking face." ' 



NOTES 375 

144 : 8. Lusus Naturae . . . Accidentium. A freak, not of Na- 
ture, but of Accident. 

144:88. Bartimeus. ''The blind man, the son of Timeus, sat 
by the wayside begging." — St. Mark x., 46. 

145:22. "It is good to believe," etc. Compare with these 
lines, p. 132 : 8-13 of Praise of Chimney- Sweepers, 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

London Magazine^ September, 1822. 

In a letter to Bernard Barton, Lamb writes: "The idea of the 
discovery of roasting pigs I also borrowed from my friend Man- 
ning," Thomas Manning was then travelling in China. In Lamb's 
correspondence are several amusing letters of thanks for presents 
of pig, 

146:2. Confucius (Kon-fu'shius). Latin form of Chinese 
*' Kung, the philosopher" (550 or 51-478 b.c). 

149 : 16. Mundus edibilis. Edible world. 

149 : 17. princeps obsoniorum. Prince of viands. 

150: 14. From Coleridge's Epitaph on an Infant. 

151 : 7. Tame villatic fowl. From Milton's Samson Agonistes. 
" Villatic," " of, or pertaining to, a villa or farm." 

152:27. Barbecue. To broil or roast whole. 

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF 
MARRIED PEOPLE 

Reprinted from The Beflector in the London Magazine, Sep- 
tember, 1822. 

155 : 4. Phoenixes. Fabulous birds, which exist only one at a 
time. After five hundred years the bird builds its own funeral 
pyre. From its ashes spring the new bird. See later, The Old 
Margate Hoy. 



376 NOTES 

155 : 37. Love me, love my dog. See Popular Fallacies^ XIIL, 
p. 322. 

159: 12. Morellas. Eor Morellos (?). A kind of clierry. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

Part of this essay (beginning 1. 11, p. 161) appeared in the Lon- 
don Magazine^ February, 1822, as part of the first of a series of 
three articles, The Old Actors ; the second of these, pubUshed in 
April, is the essay On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century ; 
and the third, On the Acting of 3Iunden, is the last of the Essays 
of Elia. 

159 : 25. To follow Lamb's criticism, read Shakespeare's Twelfth 
Night. 

161 : 18. Hotspur's famous rant about glory. See Shakespeare, 
King Henry /F., Part L, L, iii., 201 seq, : — 

*' By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap 
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon/' etc. 

161: 19. The Venetian incendiary. See Venice Preserved^ by 
Thomas Otway, an English tragic dramatist of the seventeenth 
century. 

161 : 32. lago. In Shakespeare's Othello ; his military title was 
" Ancient." The word came to mean " aide-de-camp." 

162 : 1. Bolts. Arrows. 

162: 37. Birth and feeling. In the magazine Lamb appended 
here, in a footnote, lines 13-17 of Twelfth Night, IL, ii. 

163:29. Consonancy. Appropriateness. See Amicus Bedivi- 
vus, p. 256 : 8. 

164: 23. Hyperion. In classic mythology, the father of the Sun, 
Moon, and Dawn ; the original sun-god. See Keats's Hyperion, 

164:38. In purls naturalibus. Naked. 



NOTES 377 

165 : 22. Bacon. Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount 
St. Albans (1561-1626), a celebrated English philosopher and 
statesman. Author of The Advancement of Learning, Novum 
Organum, and many other works. 

166:2-4. Foppington. In Vanbrugh's Belapse ; Tattle, in 
Congreve's Love for Love ; Backbite, in Sheridan's School for 
Scandal; Bob Acres, in The Bivals ; Fribble, in Garrick's Miss 
in Her Teens. 

166: 28. Weeds of Dominic. Milton, Paradise Lost, III., 478- 
479. Dress of the order of monks founded by St. Dominic. 

167 : 12. Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV., Part II 
I.,ii.,213. 

167: 16. Commerce with the skies. Find a parallel here to a 
line in Milton's II Penseroso. 

167:24. Albe. Vestment of white linen which the priest puts 
on before saying Mass. 

168:11. Through brake, etc. See Puck's speech in Shake- 
speare's Midsummer Night's Dream, II., i. 

168: 25. Children in the Wood, by Thomas Morton, a contem- 
porary of Lamb's, who wrote Speed the Plough, and created the 
character of Mrs. Grundy. 

168 : 27. Vesta. Goddess of the hearth and home. 

169 : 1. Sock or buskin. I.e. comedy or tragedy ; the soccus, or 
low boot, was worn by the classic actor of comedy ; the cothurnus, 
or buskin, by the actor of tragedy. See Milton's L' Allegro and II 
Penseroso. 

169:14. Dick Amlet. A character in TJie Confederacy, by 
Sir John Vanbrugh ; an English dramatist contemporary with 
Congreve. 

169: 20. Joseph Surface. In the School for Scandal. 

170: 7. Metaphrases. Close translations or renderings. 

170 : 20. A Wapping Sailor. Wapping, a part of London on the 
north bank of the Thames below the Tower. 



378 NOTES 



IT Vj 
ors. w 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 
CENTURY 

See first note to preceding essay, On Some of the Old Actors. 

170 : 33. Farquhar. George Farquhar, a dramatist of the seven- 
teenth century. Author of The Becruiting Officer and of The 
Beaux'* Stratagem. 

171 : 33. Take a bond of fate. Find a parallel here to Shake- 
speare's Macbeth, IV., i., 84. 

171 : 34. Privilege of Ulysses. A reference to the visit of Ulys- 
ses to the infernal regions. Homer's Odyssey., Bk. XI. 

171 : 39. Alsatia. Name given to a part of Whitefriars, London, 
a resort of lawless characters. 

172:23. Wycherley. William Wycherley, an English drama- 
tist of the Restoration. Author of The Plain Dealer. 

172 : 30. Catos of the pit. The critics on the floor of the theatre 
from Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 b.c.) the Roman statesman, 
called the " Censor." 

173 : L Characters in plays by Congreve and by Etherege. 

174 .: 12-14. Characters in plays by Wycherley and by Congreve. 

174 : 19. Atlantis. Reference to the New Atlantis^ an allegori- 
cal romance by Francis Bacon ; named from the imaginary island, 
first mentioned by Plato, in which the scene is laid. 

177: 11. Saturnalia. Roman holiday in honour of Saturn, 
December 17 to 23. 

177:13. Coward conscience. Shakespeare, Hamlet, III., i., 83. 

ON THE ACTING OE MUNDEN 

See first note to essay on Some of the Old Actors. 

In a letter to the Athenceum, February 11, 1832, after Munden's 
death. Lamb wrote : " In these serious times the loss of half the 
world's fun is no trivial deprivation." (Compare the comment at 
the close of Praise of Chimney -Sweepers, and note.) 



I 
t 



NOTES 



379 



179:20. Listen. Heiiry Crabb Robinson (see Introduction, 
p. xiv) writes in his diary of " Liston's inimitable faces." 

180: 5. sessa. An interjection of encouragement used in 
Shakespeare's plays. 

180: 13. Cassiopeia's Chair. Cassiopeia, the Ethiopian queen, 
mother of Andromeda, who was placed among the stars. Find a 
reference to this constellation in Milton's II Penseroso. 

180 : 16. Fuseli. John Henry Fuseli, a Swiss-English painter 
and critic. 

180 : 22. quiddity. That which distinguishes a thing from other 
things, and makes it what it is. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA 
PREFACE 
(By a friend of the late Elia) 
This essay appeared originally in the London Magazine, Janu- 
ary, 1823, signed Phil-Elia, and entitled, A Character of the Late 
Elia. It began as follows ; — 

"This gentleman, who for some months past had been in a de- 
clining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. The 
pages of the London Magazine will henceforth know him no 
more." 

There followed a second paragraph, omitted here, and three 
paragraphs, after what is the close of the essay as it stands ; for 
the last lines, see Introduction, p. xxi. This essay formed the 
preface to the 1833 edition. 

183 : 11-12. Pranked in an affected array, etc. See Introduction, 
p. xix. 

185: 38. Togavirilis. The toga assumed by the Roman youth 
on reaching manhood. 
With the lines, "He did not conform to the march of time," 



380 NOTES 

etc., compare the sentiment of the essay on New Year''s Eve, 
" I care not to be carried with the tide," etc., p. 35. And with this 
preface compare the description of Elia in New Year''s Eve. 

In the same number of the London Magazine with tins, appeared 
in the editor's column, "The Lion's Head," the following 'passage 
from a letter " To our Readers " : " Elia is dead ! . . . Mercy on 
us ! — we hope we are wrong, — but we have our shadowy sus- 
picions, that Elia, poor gentleman ! has not been honestly dealt 
by ! . . . We could lay our finger upon the very man we suspect, 
as being guilty of Elia's death ! " This was followed by a letter in 
the March number of the magazine, declaring " Elia is not dead," 
— written, of course, by Lamb. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

London Magazine^ September, 1824. 

This "old great house" Lamb refers to in his letters, — to 
Southey in 1799, to Bernard Barton in 1827; in this last letter 
he writes: "You have well described your old-fashioned grand 
paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections 
are of some such place ! I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in 
the London), Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old 
mansion." 

In describing a visit to Widford in Hertfordshire, in an article 
quoted in the Introduction, Canon Ainger writes: "It was well 
that we had such a guide, for since Lamb's day the railway (the 
Buntingford branch of the Great Eastern) has passed through 
the parish, and old roads have been deserted, and old landmarks 
removed, so that the site of the old house, now marked by a young 
plantation, would have escaped our search." 

Blakesware was the manor-house of the Plumers (see Intro- 
duction, p. xii). Mary Lamb describes the same old mansion 



:n^ot£S 381 

in Mrs. Leicester'' s School, the scene of which is laid in Hertford- 
shire. 

1 86 : 14. Puts us by. Turns us away, or diverts us from. 

187 : 25. Actaeon. A hunter in classic mythology who was 
changed to a stag by Diana, goddess of the chase, because he 
came upon her when bathing. In mid sprout. A reference to 
the sprouting of the stag's horns. 

187 : 27. Dan. Dan or Daun, Lord. An old English prefix to 
names of persons of all sorts. " Dan Chaucer." 

187 : 29. Mrs. Battle. See essay, Mrs. Battle'' s Opinions on 
Whist. 

188: 20. garden-loving poet. Here in the magazine was a foot- 
note, " Marvell on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax." For 
Marvell, see Notes, p. 368. 

189 ; 17. Resurgam. I shall rise again. 

189 : 31. Mgon. A shepherd in Greek pastoral poetry. 

189 : 39. W s. So Lamb disguises the name Plumer. 

190:11. Alice. See Introduction, p. xii. 

190: 33. Sylvanus. A Roman wood-deity, corresponding to the 
Greek Pan. He brought fruitfulness to gardens and orchards. 

POOR RELATIONS 

London Magazine^ May, 1823. 

191 : 10-12. Agathocles' pot. Agathocles, a tyrant of Syracuse, 
was originally a potter. Mordecai. "And whereas I have all 
these things, I think I have nothing, so long as I see Mardochai the 
Jew sitting before the king's gate." — Esther v., 13. Lazarus. St. 
Luke xvi., 19-21. A lion. Proverbs xxvi., 13. A frog. Ex- 
odus viii., 3. A fly. Ecclesiastes x., 1. A mote. St. Matthew 
vii., 3. 

193:6-6. Aliquando sufQaminandus erat, It was necessary 
sometimes to check or repress him, 



382 NOTES 

194:6. Nessian venom. The poisonous blood of Nessus, the 
centaur, in which the garment of Hercules was steeped. 

194 : 7. Latimer. Hugh Latimer, prelate of the English Church, 
who identified himself closely with the Reformation. He gradu- 
ated at Cambridge, 1510. 

195: 15. S,t. Sebastian in Spain. Besieged and taken by Well- 
ington, 1813. 

196: 14. Young Grotiuses. Hugo Grotius, a Dutch jurist of the 
early seventeenth century, founded the science of international law* 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 






London Magazine^ July, 1822. 

197 : 18. The Relapse, by Sir John Vanbrugh, see Notes, p. 377^ 

197 : 28. Shaftesbury. Antony Ashley Cooper, third earl of 
Shaftesbury (1671-1713), a moralist and writer. 

197 : 29. Jonathan Wild. A novel by Henry Fielding, play- 
wright and novelist of the eighteenth century ; author also of Tom 
Jones (see below) and Peregrine Pickle, 

198:1-2. Edward Gibbon, the famous English historian, and 
William Robertson, the Scottish historian, both of the eighteenth 
century. 

198 : 4. Flavins Josephus. A celebrated Jewish historian of the 
first century. 

198 : 15. Adam Smith. A Scottish political economist of the 
eighteenth century. Author of the Inquiry into the Nature and 
Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 

198 : 19. Paracelsus. A celebrated German-Swiss alchemist of 
the sixteenth century. 

198 : 38. Vicar of Wakefield. The famous novel by Oliver 
Goldsmith (1728-1774), author, poet, novelist, and dramatist. 

199 : 22. Bishop Taylor. Jeremy Taylor, an English bishop 



I 



NOTES 383 

and writer of the seventeenth century. Author of Holy Living 
and Holy Dying. 

199: 28. I do not care, etc. Here followed in the London Maga- 
zine : "You cannot make a pet book of an author whom every- 
body reads." 

199:36-37. Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616). Fletcher, John 
(1579-1625). Dramatists and poets ; intimate friends and literary 
partners. 

200:25-26. Kit Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), 
English poet and first great English dramatist. The author of plays 
which influenced Shakespeare: The Jew of Malta, Edvmrd IL, 
etc. Drayton, Michael (1563-1631), English poet, author of The 
Ballad of Agincourt. Drummond of Hawthornden. William 
Drummond (1585-1649), author of the famous Conversations ivith 
Ben Jonson. 

201 : 9. Pro bono publico. For the public benefit. 

201 : 37. Candida. By the French writer Voltaire (Frangois 
Marie Arouet), in the eighteenth century. 

202 : 1-2. Cythera. An island sacred to Venus in classic my- 
thology. Pamela. The first great English novel, by Samuel 
Richardson (1689-1761) ; author also of Clarissa Harlowe and Sir 
Charles Grandison. 

202: 30. Snatch a fearful joy. From Thomas Gray's Ode on a 
Distant Prospect of Eton College. 

202 : 36. Quaint poetess. Mary Lamb. 



STAGE ILLUSION 

London Magazine^ August, 1825. 

Original title : Imperfect Dramatic Illusion. 

204 : 6. Jack Bannister. See essay On Some of the Old Actors. 

205 : 38. Osric. In Shakespeare's Hamlet. 



384 NOTES 

TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 

The Englishman'' s 3Iagazine, August, 1831. 

This and the essay that follows were published in the magazine 
as JReminiscences of Elliston. 

207 : 18. School-men. Teachers in the mediaeval universities. 
Unchrisom babes. Unbaptized babes. A " chrisom child '» was 
one who died within a month of baptism. 

207 : 35. Figurantes. Dancers in the figures of the ballet. 

208 : 4. Stygian. From Styx, one of the rivers of Hades. See 
Notes, p. 355. 

208: 5. The old boatman. Charon (see below), who ferried the 
dead over the rivers of the underworld, Acheron, Cocytus, and Styx. 

208:6. Raucid. Hoarse (see Raucous). -. 

208 : 23. Monodrame. A dramatic piece for a single perform er.Jj 

208 : 24. Thracian Harper. Orpheus. See Notes, p. 337. He 
charmed all the beings of the underworld with his music, so that 
he was permitted to take away his wife Eurydice, on condition that 
she did not look back as she was leaving. This she did, however, 
and was forced to return. 

208: 27. Pura et puta anima. A pure and clean soul. 

209: 9. Plaudito, et Valeto. I applaud and say farewell. 

A few lilies followed the Latin in the London Magazine, and the 
article was signed " Mr. H." in reference to Elliston's having taken 
the part in Lamb's farce of that name when it was put upon the - 
stage and failed. 

ELLISTONIANA 

The Englishman's Magazine, August, 1831. See first note to 
preceding essay. 

Of Elliston, Henry Crabb Robinson writes in his diary, "He is 
a fine bustling comedian ; but he bustles also in tragedy.'' 



NOTES 385 

In the London Magazine, September, 1822, under " The Drama," 
is an attack on Elliston, manager of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane ; 
" This sorry manager ' dressed ' (to use the words of the immortal 
bard whom he so modestly and liberally patronizes), 'dressed in 
a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high 
Heaven ' — not ' as make the angels weep ' — but his own candle- 
snuffers laugh, and his scene shifters blush." 

209 : 27. Lovelace. In Clarissa Harlowe, See Notes, p. 383. 

210 : 19. ipso facto. By the very deed itself . 

210 : 27. Apelles. A famous Greek painter of the time of Alex- 
ander the Great. See Notes, p. 350. 

211 : 3. Ranger. A part created by Garrick, in The Suspicious 
Husband f by Benjamin Hoadly, in the first half of the eighteenth 
century. 

211 ; 23. Cibber, Colley. An English actor and dramatist. 

212 : 13. Consular Exile. The celebrated Roman general, Caius 
Marius, seven times consul ; the rival of Sulla. He was exiled in 
88 B.C. 

212 : 14. A more illustrious exile. Napoleon Buonaparte, em- 
peror of the French, 1804-1814. Compelled to abdicate, he was 
given the island of Elba as a " sovereign principality." 

212 : 29. Romeo, Mercutio. In Shakespeare's Borneo and Juliet, 

212 : 31. Sir A C . Sir Anthony Carlisle. See Notes, 

p. 364. 

213 : 10. Madame Vestris. A star of Drury Lane. 

213 : 23. Son of Peleus. Achilles. See Homer's Iliad, Bk. XXI., 
"• Yet over me too hang death and forceful fate." Translation by 
Lang, Leaf, and Myers. 

THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

The London Magazine, July, 1823. 

A "hoy" was '*a small vessel usually rigged as a sloop, and 
2c 



386 ^OTES 

employed in carrying passengers and goods, particularly in short 
distances on the sea-coast." 

214 : 20. Before. I.e. in the essay on Ozford in the Vacation. 

215 : 12. That fire-god, etc. Hephaistos, the Roman Vulcan, the 
Greek god of fire. " And the strong River burned, and spake and 
called to him by name : ' Hephaistos, there is no god can match 
with thee, nor will I fight thee thus ablaze with fire.' " Iliad, Bk. 
XXI. Translation by Lang, Leaf, and Myers. 

215 : 27. Ariel. In Shakespeare's Tempest, L, ii.,- 196-199. 

216 : 22. Genius Loci. Nature of the place. 

217 : 12. Ignorant present. Shakespeare's Macbeth, L, v., 58-60. 

217 : 28. The Reculvers. Towers, all that remained of the old 
parish church of the village Reculver, near the mouth of the 
Thames. 

218 : 15. Pent up in populous cities. See Milton, Paradise Lost, 

IX., 445. 

" As cue, who long in populous city pent." 

219 : 11. Orellana. A name (from the discoverer, Francisco de 
Orellana) now only occasionally given to the Amazon River. 

219 : 15. Still-vexed Bermoothes. Tempest, I., ii., 229. 

219 : 36. " Gebir." A poem by Landor. See Notes, p. 357. 

220 : 16. Amphitrite. In classic mythology, the wife of Neptune. 

221 : 8. To read strange matter in. Adapted from Macbeth, I., 
v., 64-65. 

THE CONVALESCENT 

London Magazine, July, 1825. 

Lamb's friend, William Hazlitt, has left his reflections on Con- 
valescence, quoted in the memoirs of him by William Carew 
Hazlitt. 

222 : 26. Mare Clausum. Closed sea. 

225 : 18. Lernean. From Lerna, in ancient geography, the 
marshy region south of Argos, Greece, where dwelt the Hydra slain 
by Hercules. He dipped his arrows into the Hydra's blood so that 



NOTES 387 

they might prove fatal. Philoctetes, to whom the arrows were 
bequeathed, w6unded his own foot with one, and suffered most 
agonizing pangs until he was cured by Machaon, son of ^sculapius 
(god of medicine), and surgeon to the Greeks in the Trojan War. 
226 : 2. In Articulo Mortis. At the very point of death. 

226 : 13. Tityus. One of the giants in classic mythology. 
226:16. Essayist. In the magazine, "Monthly Contributor, 

Elia." 

THE SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

The New Monthly Magazine^ May, 1826. 

This appeared originally as one of the Popular Fallacies^ see 
Notes, p. 398, when it had as its sub-title : That Great Wit is 
Allied to Madness. /Ihe opening sentence then read, ''So far 
from this being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to be 
the sanest writers." 

227:5-8. Find a parallel here to Milton's Paradise Lost, II., 
1047 ; I., 295 seq. 

227 : 8. Chaos and old Night. Paradise Lost^ I., 543. 
227 : 10. Shakespeare's I£ing Lear^ IV., vii., 16-18. 

227 : 23. Proteus. A son of Neptune, a learned sage, who pas- 
tured a herd of sea-calves. 

227 : 26. Caliban. A monster, the son of a witch in Shakespeare's 
Tempest. 

228 : 6. Withers. George Wither (or Wyther, or, as here. 
Withers) , a noted English poet of the seventeenth century. Among 
Lamb's critical essays is one On the Poetical Works of George 
Wither. 

228 : 37. Hesperian fruit. The apples received from Earth by 
Juno at her wedding, and kept by the daughter of Hesperis in a 
garden watched by a dragon. Tantalus. In classic mythology, 
punished for serving the flesh of his son Pelops to the gods, in arro- 



388 NOTES 

gance. He stood forever in a pool up to his chin in water, which 
receded when he stooped to drink. 

229 : 1. Cyclops. The three giants of classic mythology, sons 
of Urania (the muse of astronomy) and Goea (the personification 
of Earth), who forged thunderbolts for Jupiter in the workshop of 
Vulcan. See Notes, p. 386. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON 

London Magazine^ November, 1824. 

230 : 5. Althea's horn. One of the horns of the goat Ama! 
with whose milk the infant Jupiter was fed. This became the cornu- 
copia, or Horn of Plenty. 

230 : 31. Vera hospitibus sacra. In truth, sacred to guests. 

233 : 20. Beau Tibbs in The Citizen of the Worlds by Oliver 
Goldsmith. See Notes, p. 382. 



li 



4 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

London Magazine^ May, 1825. Signed J. D. 

This appeared in the magazine in two parts. The lines adapted 
from Virgil {Eclogues, I., 28 : '' Freedom though late took thought 
of me ") were prefixed to Part I. ; those from 0' Keefe, to Part II., 
which commenced 'at 1. 3, p. 239, "A fortnight has passed," 
etc. Lamb's letters to Wordsworth, and to Bernard Barton on 
April 6 of this year, give practically this account of his " Hegira, 
or Flight from Leadenhall," as he calls it ; throughout his earlier 
letters are many references to the irksomeness of his work (see 
Introduction, p. xi). He had appreciated always, however, the 
certainty of his position, as against the uncertainty of literary 
work, and, in January 9, 1823, wrote to dissuade Bernard Barton 
from giving up his situation in a bank, and depending upon his 
writings. 



NOTES 389 

236 : 24. Esto perpetua. May this be a lasting memorial. 

238:81. Gresham. Sir Thomas Gresham, knighted by Queen 
Elizabeth. An English financier. He founded the Royal Ex- 
change. 

238 : 32. Whittington. Sir Richard Whittington, three times 
lord mayor of London, in the early fifteenth century. 

240: 2. Cantle. An old word meaning "fragment." 

240 : 7. Lucretian Pleasure. A reference to the opening lines of 
De Berum Natura^ Bk. II., by the Roman poet Lucretius, who 
suggests the pleasure of beholding from the land the distress of 
another on the troubled waves of the sea. 

240 : 20. Find a parallel here to Milton's II Penseroso. 

240 : 24. Cum dignitate. With dignity. 

240 : 27. Opus operatum est. The work is completed. 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING 

The New Monthly Magazine^ March, 1826. 

This essay appeared originally as one of the Popular Falla- 
cies (see Notes, p. 398), with for its sub-title, That my Lord 
Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple are models of the genteel 
style in writing. The essay then began, '' We should prefer," 
etc. 

240 : 30. Shaftesbury. See Detached Thoughts on Books and 
Beading. 

240 : 31. Sir William Temple. An English statesman and author 
of the seventeenth century. At one time ambassador to the 
Hague. 

241:34. Morrice-dancers. Or Morris-dancers, "wearing hoods 
and dresses tagged with bells," and "representing the personages 
in the Robin Hood legend." 

241 : 35. Maid Marian. Robin Hood's sweetheart in the old 



390 NOTES 

ballads ; the daughter of an earl, she dressed as a page and fol- 
lowed him to the greenwood. 

BAEBARA S 

London Magazine, April, 1825. 

In a letter to Wordsworth Lamb refers to this as "a story 
gleaned from Miss Kelly " ; in his notes to the essay, Barry Corn- 
wall (see Introduction) says that Miss Kelly herself was the hero- 
ine. In the London Magazine, August, 1821, under " The Drama," 
is a reference to this actress as " the soul of the English Opera 
House." Lamb admired her greatly ; he writes in a letter to Mrs. 
Wordsworth of "Fanny Kelly's divine plain face." In 1819 he 
made her a proposal of marriage. In writing to decline this Miss 
Kelly adds: "I am not insensible to the high honour which the 
preference of such a mind as yours confers upon me." The 
letters on this subject were published for the first time in Sep- 
tember, 1003, in Harper's Monthly. See Vol. 107, p. 516, Charles 
Lamb's One Bomance, by John Hollingshead. 

245 : 83. Arthur. In Shakespeare's Jting John. 

246: 1. Duke of York. In Shakespeare's Bichard III. 

247 : 1*6. Macready. William Charles Macready. A noted Eng- 
lish actor, famous in Shakespeare's tragedies. 

THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 

London Magazine, October, 1823. 

This originally formed part of a longer letter to the poet Robert 
Southey. See Introduction, p. xvii. 

252:12. Nelson, Horatio, first Viscount Nelson (1758-1805), 
the celebrated English admiral who defeated the French-Spanish 
fleet (of Napoleon) at Cape Trafalgar. Southey had written a Life 
of Nelson. 



NOTES 391 

AMICUS REDIVIVUS 

London Magazine^ December, 1823. 

253 : 6. G. D. Lamb's friend George Dyer. See essay on 
Oxford in the Vacation, 

253 : 8. Cottage at Islington. This cottage, in which Lamb 
lived from 1823 to 1827, he describes in a letter to Bernard Barton, 
September 2, 1823. ^'Ihave a cottage in Colebrook Row, Isling- 
ton ; a cottage, for it is detached ; . . . the New River (rather 
elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace may be so 
termed) close to the foot of the house." 

In a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, in November of this year, he describes 
the incident which is made the subject of this essay. 

253 : 22. His who bore Anchises. ^neas carried his father 
Anchises from Troy, when the city was sacked and burned by the 
Greeks. 

254 : 14. Cannabis. Hemp. A reference to hanging. 

254: 19. Middleton's Head. An inn named for Sir Hugh Mid- 
dleton (see later) ; projector of the " New River " water supply of 
London. 

255 : 27. tremor cordis. Quivering of the heart. 

255 : 31. Sir Hugh. In Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. 
255 : 39. Abyssinian traveller. James Bruce, explorer of the 

sources of the Nile. 

256 : 3. Swans. See note on Cayster, p. 362. 

256:20. Euripus . . . Aristotle. The famous Greek philoso- 
pher Aristotle died in Eubcea in 322 b.c. ; there was a story that 
he drowned himself in Euripus, the strait that separates Euboea 
from the mainland. 

256:23. Clarence. In Shakespeare's Bichard III.^ L, iv. 

256 : 27. Palinurus. Pilot of ^neas's ship ; Virgil's ^neid. 

256 : 36. Dr. Hawes, founder of the Royal Humane Society. 

257 : 13. Asphodel. The flower of Elysium. 



392 NOTES 

257:17. Jeremiah Markland and Thomas Tyrwhitt, schol 
of the eighteenth century. 

257 : footnote. Lme adapted from Ovid, ''Virgllium vidi tai 
tum." 

257 : 21. Anthony Askew. A classical scholar and a physician. 

257 : 22. Lamb here adopts the tone of the classical elegies, es- 
pecially the Mors Tibulli, on the death of the Roman poet Tibul- 
lus, by Ovid (see Notes, p. 362), in which poets already dead rise 
up to greet the newcomer. See a parallel in Shelley's Adonais, 
- a lament for the poet Keats, — stanzas xlv., xlvi. 

SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 

London Magazine^ September, 1823. 

Here this essay was No. 1 in a series, Nugce Criticce: by the 
author of Ella, signed L. 

258 : 10. A later Sydney. Algernon Philip Sydney, an English 
patriot. Beheaded in 1683, as a supporter of the Duke of Mon- 
mouth. 

258 : 24. Circum pragcordia frigus. Chill about the heart. 

258 : 30. Author of The Schoolmistress. William Shenstone, an 
English poet of the middle of the eighteenth century. 

262 : 19. Tempo. A valley in Thessaly, celebrated from earliest 
times for its beauty. 

262 : 35. Imp. As used in falconry, to mend a broken wing, by 
the insertion of a feather. See Shakespeare, Bichard IL^ II. , i., 291. 

263 : 4. Lewis. Louis XL of France. 

263 : 16. iEol. ^Eolus, in classic mythology, god of the winds. 

264:26. W. H. William Hazlitt, Lamb's friend. The author 
of Table Talk, Spirit of the Age, Characters of Shakspere's Plays, 
and many other essays. 

265 : 6. Made on him. In the magazine, '' the epitaph of Lord 
Brooke." (See Notes, p. 352.) 



NOTES 393 

265 : 10, seq. * 'Written upon the Death of the Right Honourable 
Sir Philip Sidney, Knight, Lord Governour of Flushing." By- 
Matthew Roydon. Lamb quoted from line 29, of this elegy in 
Neio Year's Eve, p. 36, 1. 10. 

NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

The Englishman's Magazine, October, 1831. 

This essay was No. 11 of a series called "Peter's Net," the 
motto of which was, "All is Fish that comes to my Net." Here 
ihe title read : On the Total Defect of the Quality of Imagination^ 
yhservable in the Works of Modern British Artists. 

267 : 8. scaturient. Gushing, or springing out. 

267 : 26. The Gnat. The Culex, a poem for some years ascribed 
;o Virgil. 

267 : 27. Duck. Reference to the lines written by Dr. Johnson 
it three years of age : — 

'* Here lies good master duck 

Whom Samuel Johnson trod on ; 

If it had lived it had been good hick, 

For then we'd had an odd one." 

rhe duck was '* the eleventh of a brood." 

268 : 4. Cytherea. A name for Venus. See Notes, p. 383. 

268 : 18. Astraea. Goddess of Justice, who dwelt on earth 
n the golden age; "the last of the celestials has left the 
;arth." 

269 : 18. Bacchus. In classic mythology, the god of wine. 

269 : 33. Revocare gradus, etc. " To regain one's feet and go up 
)ut into the air." 

270 : 13. Tale. Number or amount. 

270: 21. Bob Allen. See essay on Christ's Hospital, 



I 



394 NOTES 

BARRENNESS OE THE IMAGINATIVE EACULTY IN THE 
PRODUCTION OE MODERN ART 

The Athenceum, January 12, 19, 26, 1833, and Eebruary 2, 1833. 

The essay appeared originally in two parts, the second beginning 
at 1. 9, p. 279, "By a wise falsification," etc., the third at 1. 37, 
p. 28l', " Artists again err, etc." The original title was. On the 
total Defect of the Quality of Imagination, Observable in the 
Works of Modern British Artists. 

273:31. Titian (1477-1576). A famous Venetian painter. 

273 : 32. Ariadne. In Greek mythology, the daughter of Minos, 
king of Crete, abandoned by the Greek hero Theseus, upon the 
Island of Naxos, where she became the wife of Bacchus. See 
Notes, p. 393. 

274:6. Guido Reni (Ra'ne). A noted Italian painter; a pupil 
of the Carracci. See Notes, p. 366. 

275 : 24. Poussin, Nicolas. A Erench historical and landscape 
painter of the seventeenth century. 

275:28. Ternary. Made up of three. 

276:2. Watteauish. Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), a 
Erench painter " who was particularly successful with subjects 
representing conventional shepherds and shepherdesses, fetes 
champetres, rustic dances," etc. 

276: 18. " Belshazzar's Eeast," by Martin. Criticised by Lamb 
also in a letter to Bernard Barton, June 11, 1827. 

277:29. Eliphaz. Job iv., 13-16. 

278 : 34. Veronese, Paul. A celebrated Italian painter who lived 
and painted in Venice. A contemporary of Titian. 

280 : 32. Julio Romano. An Italian painter and architect ; a 
pupil of Raphael. See Notes, p. 366. 

281 :1. Dryad. The dryads in classic mythology were wood- 
nymphs, who came into existence with their trees and perished 
with them. 



NOTES 395 

281 : 3. Ovidian transformations. A reference to the subject of 
Ovicrs (see Notes, p. 362) Metamorphoses, the stories of those wh(? 
had been transformed by the gods. 

281 : 32. Demiurgus. The Creator. Name for a skilled work- 
man. 

282 : 9. Errant. Wandering, in search of adventure. 

283 : 13, 14. Goneril, Regan. The unnatural daughters in Shake- 
speare's King Lear. 

In a letter to Southey, August 19, 1825, Lamb makes a comment 
in this same spirit upon "that unfortunate Second Part" of Don 
Quixote. 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE 

London Magazine, January, 1823. Signed " Elia's Ghost." 
See Preface, which appeared in this same number. 

284 : 28. Vigils. The days preceding Church feasts. 

285 : 10. Lady Day. The Feast of the Annunciation, March 25. 

285 : 11-13. Twelfth Day . . . Epiphanous. See Notes, p. 340. 

285 : 22. Erra Pater. An astrologer often mentioned in Eliza- 
bethan literature. 

285 : 30. Barons. A baron of beef was two sirloins, not cut 
asunder. 

285 : 35. Ling. A kind of fish. 

286:7. Spunging. An obsolete spelling of sponging; i.e. plun- 
dering. 

286 : 16. Meagrims. Headache ; a nervous attack. 
286:20. Restorative, etc. Punning reference to the Restora- 
tion ; the oak apple was worn as a badge by the Tories. 
287 : 19. Fifth of November. See note on Guy Fawkes, p. 335. 
287 : 24. Boutefeu. An incendiary. 



1 



396 NOTES 

287:80. Mumchance. A game with cards or dice played in 
silence; therefore, silent. 

288:3. Nonce. Literally, "For the once"; i.e. for that tim 
only ; for the present. 

288 : 28. The Ember Days. -Three days of fasting, which an 
observed four times yearly ; called in the Breviary " quattuor tem- 
pora,"--in English "Ember Days," from an old word for the 
"regular return of a given season." They have really no con- 
nection with "embers" as here implied. 

288 : 30. Septuagesima. The third Sunday before Lent. 

288 : 33. Rogation Day. The Eogation Days — so called be- 
cause then the Litany (Latin Bogatio) is chanted — are the Mon- 
day, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day. 



THE WEDDING 

London Magazine^ June, 1825. 

Canon Ainger, in his note to this essay, points out that "when 
Lamb revised the essay for the Last Essays of Elia, he was him- 
self looking forward to a bereavement strictly parallel to that of 
the old admiral ;" that is, to the marriage of his adopted daugh- 
ter, Emma Isola, to Mr. Moxon, the publisher. 

292 : 1. Diana's nymphs. Followers of the goddess of the 
chase ; green was the forester's colour. 

292 : 9. Iphigenia. Daughter of Agamemnon, who was to be 
sacrificed to Diana in order to bring favourable winds, that the 
ships of the Greeks might sail from Aulis to Troy. 

THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM 

London Magazine, June, 1823. 

295 : 3. Loves of the Angels. By Thomas Moore, the friend and 
biographer of Byron. In his preface Moore writes: "I think it 




NOTi:s 397 

right to remark that in point of fact the subject is not scriptural — 
the notion upon which it is founded having originated in an erro- 
neous translation." 

295 : 15. Gossiping. A christening-feast. 

296 : 16. Ge-Urania. Urania, the Muse of Astronomy in classic 
mythology ; Goea, or Ge, the personification of the Earths 

297: 8. Tutelar Genius. See Notes, p. 336. 

A DEATH-BED 

The original of this essay is a letter written in January, 1827, to 
Lamb's friend, Henry Crabb Robinson. 

297 : 30. N. R. stands for Mr. Randall Norris, sub-treasurer of 
the Inner Temple. See Introduction, p. xii. 

298: 12. Lamb refers to himself here as ^' Jemmy." The origi- 
nal reads " Charley." 

298 : 14. to B . In the original, *' to the Temple." 

OLD CHINA 

London Magazine, March, 1823. 

This is often quoted as " Wordsworth's favourite essay." 

300 : 13. The hays. An old English country dance. 

300 : 14. Couchant. A term in heraldry. 

300 : 16. Cathay. In the Middle Ages the empire of China was 
known as Cathay. 

300 : 19. Speciosa miracula. Dazzlingly beautiful wonders. 

300 : 26. Summer clouds. Shakespeare, Macbeth, III., iv., 110-112. 

301 : 21. Corbeau. A dark green colour, almost black. 

301 : 34. Wilderness of Lionardos. See Shakespeare's Merchant 
of Venice, III., i., 127-128. 

302:21. Children in the Wood. See Notes, p. 377. 

302 : 29. Arden, the scene of Shakespeare's As You Like It. Illy- 
ria, of Twelfth Night. 



:m 



NOTES 



304:11. Superflux. Superfluity. 

304:37. Croesus. A king of Lydia in the sixth century, b.c, 
possessed of great wealth. 

: 38. Tew R . The great financier Rothschild. 

POPULAR FALLACIES 

The New Monthly Magazine, 1826. 

These essays appeared from time to time in the magazine during 
thrj-ji.q.r : the first nine in the number for January ; the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, "a^d fifteenth, in that for February ; the tenth and 
twelfth (with 'the paper on the "Genteel Style in Writing," 
pp. 240-245), in that for March; the eleventh alone in the April ; 
and the sixteenth alone in the September number. 

In February Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton: ''I poke out a 
monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call Popu- 
lar Fallacies, and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting my 
folly against the wisdom of nations." 

305 : 22. Hickman. Mr. E. V. Lucas points out that this is the 
pugilist described as the "Gas-Man" in William Hazlitt's essay 
The Fight. 

305 : 29. Dryden. John Dryden (1631-1700), a celebrated Eng- 
lish poet and dramatist ; author of many satires in verse. Poet 
laureate (1670-1688). 

311 : 20. Hudibras. A satirical poem directed against the Puri- 
tans, written in the seventeenth century. 

314 : 10. Informs. Imbues with a spirit. 

314 : 20. Dight. Archaic form of "decked." 

314 : 31. Kind. Nature ; as in " humankind." See Macbeth, I., 
v., 18. 

318 : 1. We love to have our friend, etc. See Introduction, 
p. xvii, and A Dissertation Upon Boast Pig, 151, 1-16. 

321:19. Brook. To endure. Archaic. 



J)^OTES 399 

322 : 16. The reference is to Dante's Inferno. See Notes, p. 346. 

324 : 37. Scylla. A beautiful maiden transformed by the en~ 
chantress Circe into a monster made up of serpents and barking 
dogs. She dwelt in the cliffs and was dangerous to mariners. 
See Homer's Odyssey. 

325 : 13. Presage. A pledge, an omen. 

327 : 18. Imperial forgetter, etc. Nebuchadnezzar. See Daniel 
ii. ''And Nabuchodonosor had a dream, and his spirit was terri- 
fied with it, and his dream went out of his mind.'* 

328 : 33. Hesiod. A Greek poet of Jhe eighth century, b.c. He 
wrote Works and Days, composed of precepts, and Theogony, an 
account of the origin of the world and of the birth of the gods. 

333 : 3. Noble patient in Argos. From Horace's Epistles, II. , 
2, 129-130, 138-140. The patient here imagined himself at a per- 
formance, and would applaud in the empty theatre ; when he was 
cured he complained that he had been robbed of great pleasure, 
and of the most delightful illusions. 

To Wordsworth Lamb wrote in 1833, when these essays were 
collected and republished : "I want you in the Popular Fallacies 
to like the Home that is no home, and Bising with the Lark.'*'' 



aI^ 



INDEX 



(The references are to pages in the Notes.) 



Abyssinian traveller, 391. 

Actaeon, 381. 

iEsculapius, 387. 

Aganippe, 344. 

agnize, 339. 

Aleides, 374. 

Alexander, 350. 

Anatomy of Melancholy, 352. 

Angelo, Michael, 3G9. 

Apelles, 385. 

Apollo, 337. 

Arcadia, 338. 

Arion, 356. 

Aristotle, 391. 

Arride, 341. 

Aver n us, 373. 

Bacchus, 393. 

Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), 

377. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 383. 
Bodleian Library, 340. 
Bonaventura, St., 351. 
Brooke, Lord (Fulke Greville) , 352. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 341-42. 
Buncle, John, 352. 
Burton, Robert, 352. 

Cam, 343. 
Candlemas, 350. 
Carthusian, 1358. 
Cassiopeia, 379. 
2d 



cates, 345. 

Cato, 378. 

Centaur, 374. 

Cervantes, 358. 

Charon, 384. 

Chartreuse {see Carthusian). 

Chimajra, 3()0. 

Cicero, 348. 

Clarissa Harlowe, 383. 

Colet, John, 360. 

Complete Angler, 352. 

Congreve, William, 370-71. 

Cotton, Charles, 354. 

Cowley, Abraham, 347. 

Cressida, 374. 

Dante Alighieri, 346. 

devoir, 341. 

Diana, 353. 

Dido, 362. 

Don Quixote, 358. 

Drummond of Hawthornden, 383 

Elgin Marbles, 374. 
Elia, Bridget, 355. 
Elia, James, 365. 
Elysian, 347. 
Etherege, Sir George, 367. 

Faerie Queene, 364. 
Falstaif , Sir John, 349. 
fantastic, fantastical, 338. 



401 



INDEX 



402 

Farquliar, George, 378. 
Fielding, Henry, 382. 
Figurantes, 384. 
flameu, 361. 
Foppington, 377. 
Fuller, Thomas, 349. 



G. D., 342. 

Garrick, David, 348. 

gaudy-day, 338, 340. 

Gay, John, 358. 

genius, 336. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 382. 

Goshen, 347. 

Greville, Fulke (see Lord Brooke). 

Hades, 355. 

Harpies, 346. 

Hazlitt, William, 392. 

Helicon, 344. 

Herculanean, Herculaneum, 336. 

Hey wood, Thomas, 362. 

Hogarth, William, 336. 

Hooker, 348, 369. 

humourists, 336. 

Hydras, 365, 374, 386. 

lago, 376. 

Janus, 341. 

John, Sir (see Falstaff). 
Johnson, Dr., 338. 
Jonson, Ben, 357. 

Kemble, John, 363. 

Loar, 374. 

Leonardo da Vinci (see Vinci) . 

Lethe, 371. 

Liston, 379. 



Lully, Raymund, 357. 

Machaon, 387. 

Machiavel, 354. 

Mammon, 335. 

manes, 336. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 383 

Marsyas, 339. 

Marvell, Andrew, 368. 

Middletouian, see Middleton, 391. 

mumping, 350. 

Munden, Joseph Shepherd, 371. 

Naiads, 368. 
Nereids, 365. 

Newcastle, Margaret, 352. 
Novello, 356. 

obolus, 350. 
Ophelia, 362. 
orgasm, 359. 
Orpheus, 337, 384. 
Ossian, 335. 
I Othello, 376. 
Ovid, 362. 

Pan, 338. 

Parnassus, 343. 

Pehn, William, 359. 

Persic, see Persian, 354. 

Phsedrus, 347. 

Phoebus Apollo (see Apollo). 

phoenix, 375. 

Plato, 343. 

Plotinus, 349. 

Plumers, 338. 

Pluto, 359. 

Pope, Alexander, 354. 

Pythagoras, 347. 

Raphael, 366. 



INDEX 



403 



regale, 345. 
Religio Medici, 342. 
Richardson, Samuel, 383. 
Rousseau, 347. 
rubric, 361. 

Sancho Panza, 358. 
School for Scandal, 350. 
Selden, John, 340. 
Shaftesbury, Lord, 382. 
Shallow, Master, 357. 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 350. 
Siddons, Mrs., 371. 
Speak to it, 367. 
Spenser, Edmund, 364. 
Steele, Sir Richard, 349. 
Sterne, Lawrence, 365. 
Stonehenge, 363. 
Swift, Jonathan, 363. 

Tantalus, 387. 

Tartarus, 348. 

Tempe, 392. 

Temple, Sir William, 389. 



Terence, 348. 
Thomson, James, 363. 
Titian, 394. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 377. 
Vandyke, Sir Anthony, 354. 
Verulam, Lord {see Bacon). 
Vicar of Wakefield, 382. 
Vinci, Leonardo da, 362. 

Walton, Izaak, 352. 
Watchet, 346. 
whilom, 351. 
Wilkins, Peter, 347. 
Wither, George, 387. - 
Woolman, John, 359. 
wots, 369. 
Wycherley, William, 378. 

ycleped, 361. 
Yorick, 365. 
younkers, 369. 

Zimmerman, 235. 



MACMILLAN'S 

POCKET SERIES OF ENGLISH 
CLASSICS 

UNIFORM IN SIZE AND BINDING 
Cloth ------ 25 Cents Each 



B. A. Heydrick, State Normal School, Millersville, Pa. 

" I know of no edition that can compare with yours in attractiveness 
and cheapness. So far as I have examined it the editor's work has 
been judiciously performed. But well-edited texts are easy to find: 
you have done something new in giving us a beautiful book, one that 
will teach pupils to love and care for books ; and, which seems to me 
quite as important, you have made an edition which does not look 
• school-booky.' " 

Oscar D. Robinson, Principal High School, Albany, N.Y. 

" The books possess all the excellencies claimed for them, — scholarly 
annotation, convenience of form, beautiful open pages, attractive bind- 
ing, and remarkably low price. I shall take pleasure in recommending 
them for use in our school." 

S. H. Bundell, Principal Girls' High School, Lancaster, Pa. 

" The publishers may justly be proud of the clear t3rpe, convenient 
size, and beautiful binding of the book." 

George McK. Bain, Principal High School, Norfolk, Va. 

" Handsomer volumes for school use I have never ^een. They are 
well edited, clearly printed, and beautifully bound, while the price is 
remarkably low." 

Proiessor Charles M. Curry, Indiana State Normal School. 

. " You have hit upon a splendid form for this series, and the price will 
certainly attract the attention of any one who has been looking for good 
material at a * good ' price." 

C. N. Kendall, Superintendent of Schools, Indianapolis. 

•'The form in which you send out these little volumes is very 
attractive." 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, HEW YORK 



ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley. Edited by Zelma Gray. 

Browning's Shorter Poems. Edited by Franklin T. Baker. 

Mrs. Browning's Poems (Selections from). Edited by Heloise E, 

Hershey. 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation. Edited by S. C. Newsom. 
Byron's Childe Harold. Edited by A. J. George. 
Byron's Shorter Poems. ~ Edited by Ralph Hartt Bowles. 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns, with Selections. Edited by Willard C, 

Gore. 
?haucer's Prologue to the Book of the Tales of Canterbury, the Knight's 

Tale, and the Nun's Priest's Tale. Edited by Andrew Ingraham. 
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. Edited by T. F. Huntington. 
Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. Edited by W. K. Wickes. 
Cooper's The Deerslayer. 
De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Edited by Arthub 

Beatty. 
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Edited by Percival Chubb. 
Early American Orations, 1760-1824. Edited by Louie R. Heller. 
Epoch-making Papers in United States History. Edited by M. S. Brown. 
Franklin's Autobiography. 

George Eliot's Silas Mamer. Edited by E. L. GULICK. 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Edited by H. W. BOYNTON. 
Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. Edited by R. C. Gaston. 
Irving's Alhambra. Edited by Alfred M. Hitchcock. 
Irving's Life of Goldsmith. Edited by Gilbert Sykes Blakely. 
Irving's Sketch Book. 
Jonathan Edwards' Sermons (Selections from). Edited by Professor 

H. N. Gardiner. 
Longfellow's Evangeline. Edited by Lewis B. Semple. 
Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal. Edited by Herbert E. BATES. 
Macaulay's Essay on Addison. Edited by C. W. French. 
Macaulay's Essay on Clive. Edited by J. W. Pearce. 
Macaulay's Essay on Johnson. Edited by William Schuyler, 
Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Edited by C. W. French. 
Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings. Edited by Mrs. M. J. Frick 

2 



ENGLISH CLASSICS 



MUton's Comus, Lycidas, and Other Poems. Edited by Andrew J. 
George. 

Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I and II. Edited by W. I. Crane. 

Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics. 

Plutarch's Lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. Edited by Martha 
Brier. 

Poe's Poems. Edited by Charles W. Kent. 

Poe's Prose Tales (Selections from). 

Pope's Homer's Iliad. Edited by Albert Smyth. 

Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, and King of the Golden River. Edited by 
Herbert E. Bates. 

Scott's Ivanhoe. Edited by Alfred M. Hitchcock. 

Scott's Lady of the Lake. Edited by Elizabeth A. Packard. 

Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. Edited by Ralph H. Bowles. 

Scott's Marmion. Edited by George B. Aiton. 

Shakespeare's As You Like It. Edited by Charles Robert Gaston. 

Shakespeare's Hamlet. Edited by L. A. Sherman. 

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Edited by George W. Hufford and 
Lois G. Hufford. 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Edited by Charlotte W. Under- 
wood. 

Shakespeare's Macbeth. Edited by C. W. French. 

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Edited by Edward P. Morton. 

Shelley and Keats (Selections from). Edited by S. C. Newsom. 

Southern Poets (Selections from) . Edited by W. L. Weber. 

Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book L Edited by George Armstrong 
Wauchope. 

Stevenson's Treasure Island. Edited by H. A. Vance. 

Tennyson's The Princess. Edited by Wilson Farrand. 

Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Edited by W. T. Vlymen. 

Tennyson's Shorter Poems. Edited by Charles Read Nutter. 

John Woolman's Journal. 

Wordsworth's Shorter Poems. Edited by Edward Fulton. 

Old English Ballads. Edited by Professor William D. Armes. 

Kingsley's The Heroes. Edited by Charles A. McMurry. 



ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome and Other Poems. Edited by 

Franklin T. Baker. 
Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Edited by Clifton Johnson. 
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Edited by Cli]^ton Johnson. 
Keary's Heroes of Asgard. Edited by Charles A. McMurry. 
Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. Edited by Charles A. McMurry. 
Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. Edited by Homer P. Lewis. 
Grimm's Fairy Tales. Selected and edited by James H. Fassett. 
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Edited by Clifton Johnson. 
Out of the Northland. Stories from the Northern Myths. By Emilie 

Kip Baker. 
Scott's The Talisman. Edited by Frederick Trendly. 
Scott's Quentin Durward. Edited by Arthur L. Eno. 
Homer's Iliad (abridged). Done into English by Andrew Lang, Wal- 
ter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. 
Homer's Odyssey (abridged). Done into English by S. H. But^^^^er 
^ and Andrew Lang. 

"Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Illustrated.) Edited by 
^^ Charles A. McMurry. 

'^^TOckens's A Christmas Carol and the Cricket on the Hearth. Edited by 
(3Q James M. Sawin. 

Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. Edited by L. E. Wolfe. 
Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. 
.-* Church's The Story of the Iliad. 
fs|Jhurch's The Story of the Odyssey. 
Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Edited by Clyde'Furst. 
Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and other Poems. Edited by Justus 

Collins Castleman. 
Andersen's Danish Fairy Legends and Tales. (Translated.) Edited 

by Sarah C. Brooks. 
Longfellow's Hiawatha. Edited by Elizabeth J. Fleming. 
Lamb's The Essays of Elia. Edited by Helen J. Robins. 
Blackmore's Lorna Doone. Edited by Albert L. Barbour. 
Goldsmith's The Deserted Village and other Poems. Edited by Robert 

N. Whiteford, Ph.D. 
Shakes^ .are's Henry V. Edited by Ralph Hartt Bowles. 
Pope's The Rape of the Lock and other Poems. Edited by Elizabeth 

M. King. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



























5 S^ ♦_jJR5s^^v''' . ^ 



^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper 
r T> o /n ^<S^>A1I/** «.• ''^- ><i Neutralizing agent: Magnesium 0> 



.VI 






^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
lii ^ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
T^ qV Treatment Date: April 2009 



O > ^ ^^^»^T^^ • ^ Cr Treatment Date: April 2009 

^^^^ ^-^^&^ d'^^ PreservationTechnologies 

'^ ''^/^•^ A*^ *^ A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

^ ' VV 111 Thomson Park Drive M 

^\ Z* ^ V * Ja.,r>Lv'' 1 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 A 

'fC<\S8 A*" "^ A^ ♦^^Sfel (724)779-2111 ' WL 



\ 



'^.At^ 



s f\\\\/z:A///z> « 






^°-%. '^^^m.' .4°^ " 







4?-% 



r>^ . « • I 












i-^ . 






iP-n,, 







.0* ♦'*«* <^ V-\»i,^' 













^ ,*:^ 




